Mark Steyn Has To Cluck His Tongue

For all Steyn's talent and good fun, back when the Tea Party effort first started, he was out here talking doom and gloom.  And so it is with his latest on the HCR vote. You can take the Canadian out of Canada, I guess. But for all his brilliance, he still comes across sounding like a defeatist to me when it matters most.

Maybe he shouldn't have given up the fight in Canada, just to come south and write so often of having lost already here. We never have been as big on losing and losers in America, as they have been in Canada over the years. I'm not sure whether he's a part of the fight, or more a harbinger of bad things to come, serving his purpose thus. Or, maybe he's really just a parakeet escaped from a Canadian coal mine that was never built, now stuck singing his same old sad refrain. That, or a Chicken Little, I suppose.

Well, it seems to be in the bag now. I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it's hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished.

Comments

[Peach]

Riehll? You are a dick and I am not sire why you are even a voice for the right.

[dave in dallas]

Dude...

Steyn has a right to be glum ONCE IN A BLUE MOON. Cut him some slack. I feel exactly like he does right about how, and I"m not sure where you get off thinking its wrong.

Tomorrow's the day to ratchet it up. Today we take a brief moment to mourn the damage done to representative government of the people, by the people and for the people. Steyn's right and you're a bit wierd about this.

[Reaganite Republican]

I am a big fan of Steyn, but he's way, way wrong here- the Dems accomplished nothing but lighting their own funeral pyre- if he's not up for the fight that's fine, but I don't need to hear this kind of nonsense... it's like telling me I should admire Operation Barbarossa in Spring 1942.

This is a war- defeatist and despair-mongers have been shot for less. We will now crush the Left in this country... and if Steyn isn't shoulder-to-shoulder with us, that hoser can just take-off, eh?

[Dan Riehl]

Sure, Peach - cuz the Right in America always embraces losing with a smile on its face. And frankly, that's most of what his writing is. Strip away the humor and brilliant wit and it's often the most pessimistic crap out there. Learn to laugh as the ship goes down, you'll like drowning so muchy better than way.

Not me, thanks. I prefer people with more fight. And you won't see much of that at NRO these days.

[Rich in Tokyo Japan]

Leave Steyn alone pessimism is a great American Conservative tradition. http://www.amazon.com/Are-Doomed-Reclaiming-Conservative-Pessimism/dp/0307409589

Seriously, he is great guy and a funny writer. He does a good job illustrating what is to come if we don't stop it. And we should understand that magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished and overturning will not be easy, it will take even more determination on behalf of the American people and the people they send to congress to undo what they did than it took to pass it in the first place. Don't be complacent, sure the polls have Dems being blown out, but the election is months away, that is a long time in politics, who knows what will happen between now and then, and we cannot rest. Everyday when you wake up you will have to think to yourself what can I do to help overturn Obamacare, that is the kind of determination that is needed from millions of Americans if we ever want to see this thing repealed.

Rich Tokyo

[Dan Riehl]

"pessimism is a great American Conservative tradition"

It's a great conservative "elitist" tradition. And that's a fair point to make, as it is never what Steyn has stuck me as. God forbid NRO ever embraced a serious fighter for the Right. Most of them seem to have fled the place in recent years.

[JayJay]

Rich, pretty much agree and just like people talking about 2012 already, I tell them to think 2010 and have for a couple years now. Now it is don't think about what we will do in November but what we will do each day between now and November to get good people in office and to make those that voted for this mess and those that wanted to but were just trying to save their seats think about this on a daily basis. As far as my take on this article from Steyn, disheartening but feel the boy could use a good smack in the face and told to snap out of it.

[archer52]

Sorry, this time you are wrong. It is as bad as it looks for many reasons. Here is a post I did at another site. The points are the same. We are witnessing the results of what a totalitarian regime looks and acts like. Everything will flow through healthcare. Work, education, medical, gun possession, food purchase, lifestyle. It is the vehicle they will use to "nudge" you into the behavior they find suitable. It may take twenty more years, but your kids will no nothing else. Which means Clinton's kids will be their rulers. It is a very long, long term plan, but a good one. Who said the sixties generation didn't learn anything from Mao.

THIS is what scared our founding fathers and what made them work so hard to create something to prevent it...
----

jill,

Actually, it is. At least for the sausage making aspect of it. This whole period of time, this play you have just witnessed was all fantasy. From the "undecided" switching back and forth, from Stupak's attempt to gain credibility by holding out, even the Republican's public resistance and final capitulation, it was all a play. It was all pro-wrestling at it's finest.

No bill of this size, with all the terrible implications, splits down the middle like this. Not in the real world. Think about all the bad plans, really bad ideas, you and your friends or colleagues talked about over the years. Did any split down the middle? No, you may have one guy, the one who thought of it, and one other guy hang on, but everybody else is going What the....??"

This is what happens when one party rules. We are witnessing as close to a totalitarian regime as I care to come. In the Senate, the final say will fall to Biden, so listening to the Republicans say that, as one did, that Biden was from the Senate so he'll do the right thing is like letting Lucy hold the ball again.

Sorry, not biting. I didn't know Stupak, had I known what I know now, that he is a loyal democrat, that like most pro-life politicians he can separate his faith from his politics, I would have not fallen for him either.

You are correct, it was all for show. His submitting to an EO is just plain silly. However, I do stand by my belief he wanted to hold out for actual language in the bill but was blocked. That is why you saw his downward glances, somber tone, and slumped shoulders when he made his public announcement. He was lying when he said the EO was good enough. He knows better. He knows WE know better. He was the belle of the ball until Nancy spanked him back into line. A line he would have gotten into willingly in the first place.

But, here's my problem with all of this. It shows how seriously infected the democrat party is with far left radicals. Now the question is how much of the courts are the same.

The Supreme Court has said that they really don't like getting involved in refereeing how the sausage is made in Congress, letting the next set of elections vet the politicians doing the deed. So, they'll act on the law. But will they? The Roberts court is a fairly solid 5-4 court on obvious matters. Is the mandates on states and individuals solid? Are there constitutional violations? Does that mean the law is thrown out, to start over, or just "fixes" put in like they did with Gitmo and military tribunals? Are the Dems right in saying that now that it law, the Republicans, always trying to sound moderate, will accept this and start the whole bull-- of saying "we can fix it."? Think about Graham and Snowe and Collins, all prime candidates for making such a speech.

Our founding fathers designed a system of three branches which were intended to act as friction brakes on each other. Two of those three have been compromised. To have only one left is a little unsettling for me. On the up side, I think people are going to see that elections do matter. Maybe they won't be all hyped up to vote in the next cool guy. Assuming that the votes count in the future. (Study Zelaya's plan in Honduras for the referendum. It was quite brilliant and something we will see here soon.)

Sorry, no football, no Lucy, not interested. The Senate Republicans will do their best, but it is law now. Jefferson, Madison and Washington just rolled over in disgust, but not before muttering one word. "Fools."

[Lightwave]

Conservatives have been given the greatest challenge since Kennedy and Johnson. It took Nixon and Ford, but eventually we got Reagan. We will get our say.

The Dow quietly went from 7,800 to 10,800 over the last year as health care reform fell apart. Now, the opposite will happen. Now, we hit Obama on JOBS JOBS JOBS. Every job lost from here on out is the Democrats fault. Every factory that closes, every small business that goes under, every rise in the unemployment rate, Obama and Democrats own it.

The economy is now theirs. It will not improve. It will fall apart directly because of Obamacare crushing the country.

In November, when the unemployment rate is well over 10%, and we're well into a double dip recession...excuse me...OBAMA GREAT DEPRESSION...the public will demand this be repealed.

And the GOP overwhelmingly elected will listen. The Dems that remain will join in overriding Obama's veto.

That is now the goal.

[Room 237]

People are talking as though we woke up in a fascist state this morning. Can we all have a bit of perspective here? We are talking about a fiscal and government boondoggle, not the Enabling Act.

[Huey]

Yeah. It's as bad as it looks.

That doesn't mean that there's NO hope, just that whatever hope there is is contingent upon things which are currently out of our control, i.e., the Supreme Court.

If we take the House AND Senate in 2010, things begin to look up a bit. We can not FUND the bill, so nothing actually HAPPENS. Don't set up the bureaucracies so they don't become entrenched. Then in 2012, IF we vote in a Republican (LET ME HEAR ONE MORE TIME "MCCAIN WOULD HAVE BEEN WORSE!!!") and THEN we can repeal this monstrosity without that repeal being vetoed.

So, it ain't lost. But, keeping the citizenry riled up for THREE YEARS is going to be tough.

[Robert]

Thank you for saying that. I enjoy a lot of Mark Steyn's writing but his defeatism really gets on my nerves.

We didn't give up after 9/11, we didn't give up after Pearl Harbor, we didn't give up after the Alamo, and we're not giving up now. Speaking only for myself, I will continue the fight until victorious or dead.

[Skywise]

237?

Perspective? We woke up this morning with the government now having the power to DICTATE what kind of health care I get, how much I pay for it, how much they'll pay medical workers... basically its a coup of the entire health care industry and YOU are telling me it's just a government "boondoggle".

No. This IS the very definition of fascism.

[Sirkowski]

The teabagger becomes the teabaggy. Do you like the taste of my salty Canadian balls, Riehl? lol

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