#ObamaCare Implosion Signals Collapse of Radical Progressivism

There's lots and lots of coverage of the implosion of the president's signature legislation.

I'll be posting as much as I can throughout the day, but certainly the biggest story is now, whatever happens with the law, Obama has personally crossed a political threshold over which he'll never return. He's just not the same old ego-driven big-talker, with his chin stuck up high in the air like a pompous know-it-all. Nope. Now he's a mumbling dishonest groveler struggling to appear reasonably competent in the face of the biggest government debacle in decades. It's been an absolutely stunning political defeat. But of even bigger significance is what the president's collapse means for modern progressivism --- not "liberalism," mind you, but "progressivism," as the left adopted that term to escape the disastrous political baggage of modern liberalism and reinvent leftist ideology as big-government socialism with a wink and a nudge. With enough race-baiting and political demonization of the right, the ruse worked well enough to earn the presidential impostor a second term. But the jig is up. The bloom is off the progressive rose.

Charles Krauthammer offers a devastating autopsy, "Why liberals are panicked about Obamacare":

At stake ... is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.

Precisely when the GOP was returning to a more constitutionalist conservatism committed to reforming, restructuring and reining in the welfare state (see, for example, the Paul Ryan Medicare reform passed by House Republicans with near-unanimity), Obama offered a transformational liberalism designed to expand the role of government, enlarge the welfare state and create yet more new entitlements (see, for example, his call for universal preschool in his most recent State of the Union address).

The centerpiece of this vision is, of course, Obamacare, the most sweeping social reform in the past half-century, affecting one-sixth of the economy and directly touching the most vital area of life of every citizen.

As the only socially transformational legislation in modern American history to be enacted on a straight party-line vote, Obamacare is wholly owned by the Democrats. Its unraveling would catastrophically undermine their underlying ideology of ever-expansive central government providing cradle-to-grave care for an ever-grateful citizenry.

For four years, this debate has been theoretical. Now it’s real. And for Democrats, it’s a disaster.

It begins with the bungled rollout. If Washington can’t even do the Web site — the literal portal to this brave new world — how does it propose to regulate the vast ecosystem of American medicine?

Beyond the competence issue is the arrogance. Five million freely chosen, freely purchased, freely renewed health-care plans are summarily canceled. Why? Because they don’t meet some arbitrary standard set by the experts in Washington.

For all his news conference gyrations about not deliberately deceiving people with his “if you like it” promise, the law Obama so triumphantly gave us allows you to keep your plan only if he likes it. This is life imitating comedy — that old line about a liberal being someone who doesn’t care what you do as long as it’s mandatory.

Lastly, deception. The essence of the entitlement state is government giving away free stuff. Hence Obamacare would provide insurance for 30 million uninsured, while giving everybody tons of free medical services — without adding “one dime to our deficits,” promised Obama.

This being inherently impossible, there had to be a catch. Now we know it: hidden subsidies. Toss millions of the insured off their plans and onto the Obamacare “exchanges,” where they would be forced into more expensive insurance packed with coverage they don’t want and don’t need — so that the overcharge can be used to subsidize others.

The reaction to the incompetence, arrogance and deception has ranged from ridicule to anger. But more is in jeopardy than just panicked congressional Democrats. This is the signature legislative achievement of the Obama presidency, the embodiment of his new entitlement-state liberalism. If Obamacare goes down, there will be little left of its underlying ideology.

And realize that it's not just people like Krauthammer who recognize the impact of ObamaCare's implosion on the entire leftist project. Ezra Klein, perhaps the progressive left's biggest ObamaCare booster outside of the White House, grudgingly acknowledges how this disaster is crushing modern progressivism, even if he's loathe to express it in so many words. See, "Wonkbook: Obamacare’s troubles threaten Obama’s core political project":

Like many Democrats of his generation, Obama believes that the government is necessary — but that the government must be redeemed if it's to be trusted. He thinks the American people are rightly suspicious that the government doesn't do big things well. He venerates the market's capacity for innovation and efficiency even as he struggles against its ruthlessness and cruelty. And he ran for office convinced that if the American political system was going to be able to address the country's problems going forward, it would require an end to the old ideological battles and the forging of a new policy consensus.

The Affordable Care Act is the purest incarnation of these theories. It's meant to protect Americans from the predations of both the job market and the health-insurance market by making sure the poorest Americans can afford coverage, the sickest Americans can't be denied it and no one is tricked into plans that prove inadequate when health crises strike.

But it's also meant to avoid the pitfalls — both substantive and political — of big-government programs by relying on private insurers competing in tightly regulated, highly transparent, government-structured marketplaces. That's why Obama modeled the plan off of Mitt Romney's largely successful health reforms in Massachusetts. What better way to absorb Republican ideas and generate Republican buy-in then to adopt an idea from one of the GOP's leading lights?

Obamacare's success would've affirmed the theories underlying Obama's presidency — theories that could then be picked up by future presidents. Instead, Obamacare is systematically blowing apart the very premises it's based on.

Of course we'll be seeing last gasp efforts on the left to spin the ObamaCare collapse as the fault of Republicans or the insurance companies, but at this point the most common word I'm hearing on television news is "panic." It's indeed a turning point.

Now there's lots of shadenfreude on the right, and for good reason. This is a wholly owned Democrat debacle. The important thing for conservatives is to avoid acceding co-ownership of the sundry healthcare fixes now being floated on Capital Hill. Sure, constituents need relief. But short-term fixes to the law aren't smart. We need to repeal and replace ObamaCare in toto, and despite the meme that Republicans haven't offered alternatives, the fact is market-based healthcare reforms have been in wide circulation throughout the entire past five years of the Obama interregnum. What matters is for Republicans to win majority control of Congress and the presidency. Then they'll have the institutional political power to unwind the plague of progressivism that's been destroying America for these last few sorry years.

BONUS: At Hot Air, "Krauthammer: Obama’s insurance “fix” just another example of him “rewriting a law unilaterally”."