By Mr. Curmudgeon
Built in 1824, Blair House – across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – has served as the president’s guesthouse for visiting foreign dignitaries since 1942. Recently, President Obama announced his intention to use the venue for a bipartisan summit on ObamaCare. The unanimous (at least for now) Republican opposition to the president’s take-over of the nation’s health care system has obviously perplexed the administration to the point that they view the Party of Lincoln as sufficiently foreign – if not outright extraterrestrial – as to accord them a half-day stay at Blair House. Unlike past health care negotiations, these proceedings will be televised.
In a CBS Super Bowl pre-game interview with Katie Couric, Obama said, “If we can go, step by step, through a series of these [ObamaCare] issues and arrive at some agreements, then, procedurally, there’s no reason why we can’t do it a lot faster than the process took last year.” The president, no longer able to count on frightened Democrats to pass his totalitarian monstrosity, is hoping to sweat squishy Republicans – under the glare of television lights – to cave, providing the president the fig leaf of bipartisan support. If Republicans were smart (and that’s a big if), they would use the half-day summit, in the words of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to provide the nation with a “teachable moment.”
This will require bringing in Tea Party consultants. Principle-free Republicans are a little rusty – if not completely oblivious – to making cogent Constitutional arguments against an overreaching government. It would be nice to see Obama’s minions put on the spot, requiring Pelosi Democrats to provide a Constitutional defense of the indefensible. They can’t, of course, but their dismissal of Constitutional restraints on government power would provide a very powerful and very public moment for Americans already suspicious of the totalitarian motives of Obama’s personality cult.
It might help generate a discussion; not between politicians – Republican and Democrat – arguing the fine points of totalitarian minutia, but between today’s Americans and those who founded the nation. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution provide windows into the hearts and minds of our predecessors. Today’s Republican Party may not hold to the conservative principles of Ronald Reagan or the Tea Party, but they ought to be concerned with conserving the Constitutional arrangement between the people and its government – a contract Obama’s dangerous initiatives threaten to erase.
“Do not separate text from historical background,” James Madison said of our founding document. “If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.” Republicans, are you listening?
