Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The small 'c' constitutional reason why Obamacare is such a travesty

There are two Constitutions - one is the formal document and the rulings thereon, the second one is the informal constitution, the understanding among those who trade power that nothing 'major' can be changed in our constitutional or social order without broad, bipartisan support.  With Obamacare President Obama and the Democrat Congress blatantly broke the second constitution - a fact illustrated by the following chart.

This rather definitively contradicts the left's narrative of "Republican" obstructionism doesn't it?  For all previous major changes had huge bipartisan majorities in favor of them.  By contrast Obamacare had a near bipartisan majority against it.  Such one sided passage of major legislation did not, indeed cannot abide by our unwritten constitutional requirement of national consensus.  The Democrats should have known this and crafted a law that could have been supported by a strong bipartisan majority.  It reminds me of an old saying:  "To be loved, it helps to be lovely" - which goes for legislation too.

A fact that over 60 Democrat ex-Congressmen now understand.

PS:  I haven't looked, but I would bet that almost all of Obama's other 'victories' - the stimulus, financial 'reform' and so on have the same extremely partisan profile which tells me that they are very unlikely to stand (well except for the stimulus which, sadly, is more flushed than standing).  One more sign that "The One" is singular only in his inability to master the art of statecraft.

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