U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint said Monday he's "less confident" that Republicans can stop President Barack Obama's health care overhaul from passing now that it's down to a few votes.
But the South Carolina Republican said he isn't backing down from his prediction last July that health care could be Obama's Waterloo. The comment propelled DeMint into the national spotlight among conservative activists.
"I don't back off of it at all. It's true. This is a critical week for us, because it's important we stop the health care bill," DeMint said outside a campaign luncheon. "If not, there's a wave of big-government agenda items right behind it that are going to be harder to stop if we can't stop health care."
DeMint toured South Carolina with a beneficiary of his newfound influence. Florida U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio and DeMint had joint fundraisers in Charleston, Columbia and Greenville. Reporters were not allowed into the events. DeMint talked to reporters outside. Rubio was not made available.
Obama officials have predicted health care legislation will clear the House by the end of the week. DeMint said the top question from voters Monday was whether it could be stopped.
"Frankly, I don't know," he said. "I'm less confident we can, now that it's just down to flipping a few Democrats. They'd have to be remarkable people not to fall under the kind of pressure they'll be under."
Now that doesn't sound like the kind of guy who seems confident that he's won already. It sounds like a man resigned to a fate that he has no control over. That of course is fitting, because the Republicans walked out on this process from day one. The rest of the year was spent trying to delay the bill as much as possible, then declaring the Dems had to start over.
A bill that starts over will never have Republican support. You could ask them to write an entire bill, and they wouldn't do it, short of a number of piecemeal attempts at giving the insurance companies all the time they need to adjust their marketing schemes to continue making massive profits off the American people. Even then, they'd expand coverage by...3 million people. One percent of America would gain coverage by the rosiest of Republican estimates. This is their plan.
Odds are good they wouldn't even vote for it themselves. If there's tens of millions of Americans ready to take to the streets to stop Obama tyranny, they sure as hell didn't show up today in DC.
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