Health care reform reveals Dems' true colors

First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not persuade a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan - and have largely ceased to try. As of this writing, a president who seems willing to interrupt prime-time programming on the slightest pretext has not scheduled a speech from the Oval Office to make his final health reform appeal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working her parliamentarians overtime to achieve the congressional equivalent of the Immaculate Conception - a law without a vote. The most visible Democratic domestic priority of the last 40 years must be smuggled into law, lest too many Americans notice. Politicians claiming the idealism of saints have adopted the tactics of burglars. Liberals tend to blame this state of affairs on the brilliance of Republican fear-mongering. The more likely explanation: Americans are engaged in a serious national debate about the role and size of government, in which the advocates of government-dominated health care are significantly outnumbered and vastly outmatched in enthusiasm. A second thing we have learned during the health care debate is that the Democratic Party's commitment to abortion rights is even more central to its identity than health reform...read more