Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The Fetid Tang Of Desperation

Greg Sargent recaps the latest "grassroots" effort to go after "vulnerable Obamacare Democrats" during the congressional summer recess and finds it sorely lacking in both effectiveness and relevance:

Today Heritage Action for America is launching a nine-city tour designed to drum up support for the push for defunding. The White House-allied Americans United for Change is vowing to match Heritage’s events with its own, in an effort to demonstrate at least as much or more energy on the pro-Obamacare side. We’re already seeing little evidence to suggest that the great and fearsome conservative backlash to immigration reform is materializing. Will the same happen on the great defund-Obamacare crusade?

Those who want a shutdown confrontation are themselves framing the battle in these terms, arguing that the recess is the time for the grassroots to speak up and demand that the squishy GOP establishment stiffen its spine and do what it takes to halt Obamacare before it’s too late. Indeed, National Journal reports that the movement to defund Obamacare is falling “on hard times,” and even defund-Obamacare ringleader Ted Cruz seems uneasy.

Indeed, the big Republican plan is to somehow terrify Dems who voted for Obamacare to run away from the plan.  If there's any Dem who should be vulnerable to that tactic, it's Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas.  But Pryor isn't biting:

It has been a success,” Pryor says of Obamacare, citing a number of health insurance reforms and other benefits taking effect. “Probably we did get 80 percent [right], we have to go in and work on the 20 percent.”

Seems somebody has learned the lessons of Blanche Lincoln's complete meltdown in 2010.

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