Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, drives me up the wall with a sentence that he probably intended to be rather innocent:
Another option would be to attack the law piecemeal by going after its least popular provisions - the new taxes, the Medicare cuts and the fine for Americans who don't buy insurance. This strategy might be good short-term politics but would do little to lay the groundwork for an actual conservative alternative.
Conservative alternative? Obamacare is the conservative alternative!
Whether the mainstream media (what qualifies as "mainstream" anymore?) is truly liberal hardly seems to matter. The health care debate has shown that any loose allegiance outfits like the New York Times and network television have to liberal causes or the Democratic Party bears no comparison to the disciplined marriage between conservative media and the GOP.
How else can one justify the gross misperception among the American public that the health care bill does anything but continue the status quo -- a corporate, for-profit health care system that works within the context of a market that is grossly distorted by government subsidies and regulations. Obamacare is the legislation that Republicans proposed in the 1990's. It's most hated provision, the individual insurance mandate, was touted by Tommy Thompson and it was implemented by Mitt Romney!
And yet, the conservative movement in the United States is so impressively united that it can convince Americans that an enormous giveaway to insurance companies represents an ominous step towards communism. Every single Republican member of Congress voted against the plan that so closely mirrored the one their party proposed 15 years ago. That is party discipline for you.
