What triangulation is possible on health care? The fundamental building block of Obama’s program is the individual mandate to buy insurance. Absent that, all that’s left is a consumer-protection bill that limits insurance-company practices. Yet the mandate can’t be scaled back but still preserved: It’s either in place or it isn’t. There’s no middle ground.

On “cap and trade,” the other major pillar of Obama’s secular temple, either we tax carbon, or we don’t. The left will deride any program without coercion or tax increases (even though the evidence suggests that voluntary measures are bringing down our carbon emissions nicely). Again, faced with a choice between a tax and no tax, there’s no middle ground.