Nelson's ad blitz likely hint of Obama's health defiance
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
As we go to press ahead of the State of the Union Address Wednesday evening, the question is whether President Obama will stay the course — some are saying “stay the curse” — on his disastrous ObamaCare.
The prescription seems to many Americans to call for whacking one-sixth of the national economy into something looking increasingly like government run, socialized medicine.
One hint that Obama has no intention of tracking to the middle on the “reform” Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have cobbled together might be found in Nebraska.
Sen. Ben Nelson, backed by huge Democrat Party media spending, is carpet bombing the state with advertising defending the ends, if not the means, of trading his (our) vote to Obama in the infamous “Cornhusker Kickback.”
The Nelson message seems to be that even if Nebraskans think they detest ObamaCare (66 percent opposed), if they will only try it, they’ll love it.
The problem with that gamble is like the problem with Obama himself. By the time most Americans figured out Obama’s leftist agenda, our center-right nation was stuck with him for four years.
Unlike the Brits, U.S. voters can’t act quickly to reverse disastrous courses through elections triggered by parliamentary votes of “no confidence.”
At least candidate Barack Obama had a surface charm. ObamaCare was ugly from the outset. It has more than 2,000 pages of non-transparent jargon and legalese arrived at by Reid and Pelosi behind closed doors, carrying clauses and sub clauses, many apparently yet to be revealed. The Nebraska kickback, for example — $100 million for Cornhusker Medicaid and pernmanent exemption from paying into the program — was discovered tucked away on page 2,129.
If Nelson were up for election next November instead of in 2012, he would be running for the hills like other Senate and House Democrats or dropping out like Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and the vice president’s son, Senate candidate Beau Biden of Delaware.
Post-Massachusetts, with the boil-up of the Scott Brown anti-Obama rebellion, some Democrat politicians are checking with their pollsters before mentioning anything connected with President Obama, ObamaCare especially.
So, why is the Democrat hierarchy flooding Nebraska with Nelson propaganda? Is it just to salve Nelson’s hurt pride? Not likely, even though he has been flayed as a “disgrace” by, among others nationally, Republican and Democrat, fellow Democrat Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania.
Logic points to the conclusion that the president will not dump ObamaCare and intends to spend millions for Nelson and others in other states to be Pinocchio embodiments for the White House’s “never say die” talking points.
As an aside, we’d advise dropping the absurdity Nelson is promoting that he really wanted to do for every state what he did for Nebraska. A third grader can figure out that adding billions of dollars more to the ObamaCare tab simply drives America more deeply into the current $14.3 trillion deficit pit.
If all of the above was anathema only to Republicans, Obama might simply overlook them. He has done that for a year. But he needs Independents and they don’t like ObamaCare either. Reference Massachusetts.
Ben Nelson can’t even be aloof from Republicans because there are so many more of them than Democrats in a conservative state like Nebraska. Nebraska Independents seem to be moving away from him also.
A Scott Rasmussen poll showed Republican Gov. Dave Heineman would beat Nelson about 2-to-1 in any Senate election held today.
The pent up public reaction against ObamaCare came pouring out after Brown, a little known Republican, drove his pickup truck around Massachusetts, promising to be the 41st vote in the U.S. Senate needed to derail ObamaCare.
In effect, Brown got elected in the most liberal state in the country by promising to do what many Nebraskans assumed Ben Nelson would do but did not — rein in the radical solutions coming from the Democrat-controlled Congress and Barack Obama.
Even after the Massachusetts shocker, Nelson is not the only Democrat missing the lesson.
Democratic strategist David Axelrod has recommitted the Obama administration to pressing forward on whatever Reid and Pelosi can come up with and call health reform.
Nelson’s posturing seems all of a piece with that drive off the cliff.
January 29, 2010
