The formerly sure-footed one’s latest amazing winning strategy

Obama, the subtle candidate who never made a foolish move (at least according to the legend) and whom no one could figure out, has become, as president, transparent.

From HotAir:

Obama’s solution on illegals and health care? Amnesty
posted at 9:29 am on September 18, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

The Washington Times reports that Barack Obama has finally concluded that Joe Wilson was right, and that ObamaCare presents a big problem in handling illegal immigrants. Fortunately, the White House has found a solution to the problem. No, they’re not going to beef up enforcement or require identification before receiving subsidies and services. They’re just going to offer amnesty so that no one’s illegal anymore:

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered—a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. “That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

Mr. Obama added, “If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.”

Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care.

In other words, not only should everyone pay for Americans to get health care, we should pay for health care for those who came here illegally. That’s going to be a winning argument in 2010, especially in Blue Dog districts! We’re going to bust the budget and infringe on your personal choices, and we’re going to make you pay for insurance for illegal immigrants!

If a Republican had run an ad making those charges in 2008, the media would have called it a “smear”. If comedians used it in their act, it would have been a joke about GOP paranoia. The joke, unfortunately, is on those who voted for the Blue Dogs because of their supposed conservatism, and on those who voted for Obama because of his supposed centrism.

[end of Hot Air entry]

HotAir also has a video of Obama speaking on this point.

Think of it. The health care proposal is in trouble, with a majority of the country now opposing it. So what does Obama do to improve its chances? He tells the country that the only way to make the health care proposal work is ALSO to legalize 12 million illegal aliens and make them beneficiaries of the plan. He tries to make a deeply unacceptable and controversial proposal acceptable by marrying it to ANOTHER deeply unacceptable and controversial proposal. Has the man lost his mind?

This is what I think has happened here. The left passionately desires the things it has always desired, particularly open borders and socialized medicine—the perfect recipe for national self-destruction. But now that the left is in power and is actually trying to push these things through, the badness of them has become palpable. But the left, wanting what it wants, and no longer willing to conceal what it wants , has lost the ability to present these things in a manner that will make them seem plausible and acceptable, even to many people who once would have been willing to be sold.

Obama’s ever-growing, self-inflicted catastrophe reminds me of the 1966 Bob Dylan song, “I Wanna Be Your Lover”:

Well, Phaedra with her looking glass
When she lays upon the grass
She gets messed up, and she faints
That’s ‘cause she’s so obvious and you ain’t.

- end of initial entry -

CF writes:

Obama has three key flaws. He has never overcome adversity (save the minor adversity of losing to Bobby Rush), he has an utter lack of management experience, and he is very, very left-wing. He is particularly left-wing on race, when he ran as a moderate on race. These things will sink him. The real surprise is how fast they are sinking him. That he is going down so fast suggests a real swing to the right, not just a reaction to Obama.

John Dempsey writes:

This seems too unrealistic. Can Obama really be this ignorant? He must know that the American people will go nuts with this kind of proposal. Would this not put this whole push for universal health care in the toilet?

Glenn Beck regularly makes the statement that when Obama is doing something with one hand, watch the other hand. There has to be more to this than meets the eye. Hasn’t there?

LA replies:

All I can see is that he seems to be shooting himself in the foot. I’ve presented one theory on why he’s doing this, the Phaedra Theory. He cannot repress or conceal his disorderly, illicit, and destructive (leftist) desires. He must express them, no matter how ruinous they may be, even for himself. I don’t have any other theory at the moment.

LA continues:

For those not familiar with the story of Phaedra, there are many versions, the first and most famous being Euripides’ tragedy, Hippolytus. Its plot is summarized at Wikipedia. In Euripides’ play, Phaedra seems almost a passive, unwilling victim of desires she can’t control. In other versions, such as in Mary Renault’s The Bull from the Sea, she is more active and blameworthy in bringing on the disaster. But I also like Bob Dylan’s very succinct version, which gets right to the point.

Shrewsbury writes:

Obama seems to be governing like the former ACORNer that he is—doing everything he can think of to overload and collapse the system, the explicit Alinskyite raison d’etre of his former thugmates.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 18, 2009 06:23 PM | Send