Can the GOP maintain the intensity of the opposition to Obamacare it has both mounted and built on over the past many months?
Political analysts have been busy saying “seven months is a lifetime in politics” since the passage of the massive (and massively unread) legislation of last week. They are right, of course, and in an ordinary political cycle, a half-year-plus could be counted on to diminish the upset over the jam-down.
President Obama could be counted on to use the bully pulpit to assuage and persuade, or at least to change the subject. A foreign crisis could intervene. A new debate could break out. Anything could happen and usually does.
So, the conventional wisdom goes, Democrats need not fear a wipeout in November. They might even stage a comeback of sorts. Nancy Pelosi’s innate winsomeness, Obama’s humility and graciousness in victory, and Harry Reid’s charisma could all combine to calm the political waters and allow the congressional majorities to perpetuate themselves.
After all, look what happened to the Tea Party movement born almost a year ago.
Oh, that’s right. The Tea Party movement didn’t dissipate over the past 12 months. It grew. Enormously. Dissatisfaction with Obamacare didn’t decline. It mounted. The president’s popularity has been steadily trending down despite more than two score and 10 speeches.
The “benefits” of Obamacare will of course kick in. Just as the election rolls into view, “open season” for employee health benefits will appear for major employers across the country, and then … who knows?
There is no cost containment in the bill, just hundreds of thousands of newly eligible dependents aged 21 to 26. What will that do to the premiums for the family plans?
Employers will be doing the math between then and now. Many of them will be altering the insurance they offer to reflect the new economics of Obamacare. The president promised again and again — he promised and we all have the tape — that if you liked your insurance and your doctor you could keep them both. What could go wrong?
That’s the Democrats” thinking. Or prayer. Or plea. And that has been the mainstream media’s script. “Seven months is a lifetime in politics.”
Unless it is not. Unless politics have “black swan” events, just like markets. Big, unpredictable events, events far outside the ordinary rhythms of elections.
There’s a lot of kindling on which to build a political firestorm: the Troubled Asset Relief Program; the “stimulus” that wasn’t; General Motors; cap and tax and the Climategate fraud; a $1.6 trillion deficit; the “Slaughter Solution”; and of course the Obamacare jam-down.
Add in the contempt the Manhattan-Beltway media feel for middle America. If that contempt of the MSM for the political opposition — how often have the proponents of “civil discourse” used the term “Tea Baggers”? — acts to fuel the political counterpunch, how high could the wave crest?
What if new media transform legions of new activists into committed, effective political operatives, the sort who are willing to dig deep into their pockets to fund and into their time to organize for Republican candidates?
What if the companies demonized or assaulted by the president over the past few months, from insurance companies to doctors and medical device manufacturers, seize on the opportunity offered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision to strike back?
If even some of these things, much less all of them, come to pass, then Nov. 2, 2010, could be a day that lives long in American political history, a day about which books are written, and from which a new era in American politics is dated.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
