Nelson to join others paying for Obama's grand designs?
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
With Senate warhorses Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd buckling this week under the load of Barack Obama’s grand designs, we wonder (again) about Ben Nelson.
Unlike Dorgan and Dodd, who announced they will not seek re-election, Nelson doesn’t face the voters until November 2012.
This means he is lucky, right? Maybe not.
On one hand, Nelson can count on three years in which to bob, weave, clear his head and hope voters forget the health care betrayal that brought him to his current low state.
More likely, he simply faces three years to baste in popular anger over what Obama-style governance is doing to America — including his own vote-bargaining disgrace with Obama over health care, the shiftiness in domestic policy, the deceit in the Democrat-controlled Congress, the opaqueness where transparency was promised, the indecisiveness in foreign affairs, the weirdness with national security.
What is incubating within “hope and change” seems to be economic death by staggering deficits, wasted TARP and stimulus funds, climate change policy, and union-boosting favoritism.
Nelson has to answer for the health care part of this and for a segmented share of the whole.
When his vote doesn’t count for passage or defeat of a bill, as it usually doesn’t, Obama and Senate boss Harry Reid let Nelson vote to satisfy the conservative home folks, whose votes Nelson needs to win elections.
But when every vote is vital, as they were with ObamaCare, Nelson proved he is a dependable Democrat ally for Obama and Reid.
But what appeals in Washington’s Democratic leadership circles can be a boomerang in Nebraska.
Nelson became the poster politician for all that the public sees as wrong with Washington after it was revealed he had bargained with Obama for $100 million in special Medicaid treatment in perpetuity for Nebraska in exchange for his vote — the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback.”
The scheme looked too much like a bribe for upstanding Nebraskans to swallow, and they didn’t.
A poll taken just after the kickback was revealed, showed Nelson going down 61-30 percent to Gov. Dave Heineman in a hypothetical race for the senate.
Increasingly, Americans are disgusted at the very Obama programs and methods Nelson is going to have to nail himself to the mast to support.
Those would involve Obama plans for energy restriction via so-called Cap-and-Trade and its billions in payoffs to the likes of China and various dictators of the Third World countries so they can build their economies while ours is being torn down.
Another Democrat priority has been “card check” — the knuckling under to labor unions by forbidding secret ballots in union elections.
And deficits and taxes. Oh so many more taxes and/or trillions dollar of deficits to buy Obama’s dreams.
The methods? Well, they would include the 2,000-page bills, ones that some lawmakers don’t read or even understand. The smoke-filled rooms. The first in history Christmas Eve voting on health care. The dodging the home folks by shutting off the phones. The refusal to hear the Republican opposition.
Shutting out Republicans is especially strange for Nelson because he had to have Republican votes to win every election he has been in.
If current trends hold, Nelson might wind up in the minority after the 2010 mid-term elections. Not long ago, that seemed impossible.
A number of informed observers predict Republicans will recapture the House of Representatives.
The high watermark for Obamaism probably came sometime in later 2009. The same probably can be said for Ben Nelson.
January 8, 2010
