HALF-FULL REPORT 10/04/13

The rollout of Obamacare this week was FUBAR.

FUBAR is a military acronym for: F(ouled) Up Beyond All Recognition.  If you think it is ah, indelicate, take a look at the 800 number for Obamacare’s national hotline.

Signups for Obamacare exchanges on launch day were disappointing in:Louisiana and Texas and California and Tennessee and Connecticut and Wisconsin and Kansas and most everywhere else.  Overall, fewer than one percent of visitors signed up, a fact only a British newspaper reported.

The abysmal signup rate was due in part to rampant glitches which made it difficult – or impossible – to sign up, in part because visitors didn’t like what they saw.

MarketWatch went 0-for-51 in trying to apply online for Obamacare in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  CNN didn’t have much luck, either.

"The federal government has said that somewhere out in this vast country of 313 million people, where 48 million lack insurance coverage, someone has managed to sign up for health insurance on the federally-run marketplaces," wrote Sarah Kliff on the blog of Journolister Ezra Klein. "As of yet, we haven’t tracked this person – or these people – down.

"This is not for lack of effort. Reporters here at The Washington Post and at other publications have been on the hunt for this mythical creature."

The Web sites crashed because so many people were trying to access them, the administration said. Tim Worstall of Forbes didn’t buy this excuse.

"When a website falls over under the weight of only 60,000 visitors, the sort of traffic that can and often does hit a single blog post, then I think we can conclude that perhaps government computing isn’t quite all it’s cracked up to be."

It was a blessing in disguise for those who wanted to enroll in Obamacare but couldn’t, because the administration has created a "hacker’s wet dream," said computer security expert John McAfee.  Millions of Americans will have their identities stolen, he predicted.

"What idiot put this system out there?" Mr. McAfee asked.

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Tom Clancy, "the military’s Boswell," died Tuesday night at Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore.  He was 66.  The cause of death was not disclosed.

He’ll be missed.  I wrote this obit for the Post-Gazette.  Peggy Noonan remembers him here.

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Last week Republicans were at each other’s throats. Delighted journalists found the excuse they needed to divert attention from Obamacare’s problems.  Democrats cackled Republicans were playing right into their hands.

This week Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, who’d called him a "cuckoo bird," emerged from a private dinner with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, to declare their relationship "cordial."

That’s because, in the words of another famous Texan, Sens. Cruz and Mike Lee, R-UT, are now "inside the tent ****ing out, instead of outside the tent ****ing in.".

With Republicans unified (more or less) on a strategy of seeking a one year delay of Obamacare, it’s now possible for them to get a "win" in the current standoff, and – even if they "lose" — to get a much bigger win in the only fight that matters.  There is no balm for hurt feelings quite so soothing as victory.

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This week it was Republicans who watched in delighted amazement as Democrats committed blunder after blunder.

Aside from the "non-essential" federal workers put on unpaid leave, few Americans suffer real harm from government "shutdowns/" So President Obama strove to make it as painful as possible, by shutting down parks – even  privately run parks – and ordering cancellation of the Air Force – Navy football game.

This is a reprise of his ham-fisted tactics during the fight over the sequester, when he cancelled White House tours, and ordered the FAA to delay flights.  His thuggishness backfired then.  It’s backfiring again:

World War II vets did not take kindly to his efforts to wall off the World War II Memorial.  Neither does the chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

"Real effort had to be taken and precise instruction had to be given to round up barricades and have them installed in a clumsy, visible way that would block pedestrians from entering the memorial," notes GOP consultant Ed Rogers.  "The shutdown is a net minus for the Republican brand, but the stunt at the World War II Memorial was too cute by half, and it will cost the White House."

Zero’s stormtroopers tried to block access to George Washington’s estate Mount Vernon, which the government doesn’t own.

When the Obamunists told him to shut down parks, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told them to pound sand.

Headlines like this do not build sympathy for the president’s stance: Nor do stories like this. Or this.

Dingy Harry wasn’t helping.  Neither was Chuck Schumer.  Jen Rubin lists ten ways Democrats have hurt themselves.

Americans don’t like the shut down, and they blame Republicans more for it.  But an overwhelming majority wants Democrats to negotiate with the GOP.  Their refusal is a big tactical mistake, thinks Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.  In this op-ed, Sen. Paul says exactly the right thing, in exactly the right tone.

A surprised Jim Taranto of the Wall Street Journal asks:  "Could Republicans be Winning?"

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Things are looking up for the GOP candidates for the Senate in New Jersey and for governor in Virginia.

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Capitol police shot to death Thursday an apparently deranged woman from Connecticut when she tried to drive her black Infinity sports coupe into the Hart Senate Office building.  It was the shutdown engineered by those evil Republicans that drove Miriam Carey to her desperate act, said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Tex. There were similar douche reactions from the usual suspects. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer wondered if the shooting would "propel" Congress to end the shutdown and get back to work .  The short answer, Wolf, is "no."

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In addition to the not insignificant fact that it’s very popular, the beauty of a strategy of seeking delay of Obamacare is that it sounds so moderate and reasonable. Democrats sound silly when they say Republicans are "terrorists" who are "holding America hostage."

It is imperative that Obamacare be repealed and replaced.  But that won’t happen unless Republicans control both House and Senate.  What’s most important about the shutdown fight is how it prepares the battlefield for the midterm elections.

People think the "shut-down" is more harmful than it is, and blame Republicans for it, because that’s what the news media tell them.

So far, Republicans are doing exactly what they should do to demonstrate they are the reasonable ones.  Each time the House sends a bill to the Senate and Dingy Harry swats it away, more see the truth through the media fog.

Dingy Harry declared Ted Cruz de facto Speaker of the House.  That’s mostly nonsense, but in one way it’s true, because Cruz deserves credit for the excellent idea for the House to send to the Senate bill after bill to fund parts of the government. Before Zero and Dingy Harry abandoned this sound and longstanding practice, Congress would pass each year 13 different appropriations bills.

The House should keep sending bills to the Senate. Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark, has one Democrats will look as bad rejecting as Dingy Harry did when he vetoed restoration of funding for kids suffering from cancer.

A caller to the Rush Limbaugh program had a great idea for another.  Offer to end the shut down if everyone – Congressmen, Senators, their aides, and all federal employees – are included in Obamacare.  Democrats can never agree to that.  Public employee unions are the heart of their base, and they want nothing to do with Obamacare.  But how can Democrats argue against this proposal looking bad?

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The CIA’s effort to train "moderate" rebels in Syria is, ah, a government program.  Max Boot sums up the strategy – imposed upon the Company by the White House – as "Go out and risk your lives for a stalemate."

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If the shutdown showdown persists for about another week, the dispute over Obamacare will morph into the dispute over whether to raise the debt ceiling.  This is one of the reasons why I think the GOP – though it’s suffering pain now because of it – will benefit in the long run from Ted Cruz having forced the Obamacare confrontation.

Conservatives beguiled by polls like this one which indicate a majority of Americans don’t want to have the debt ceiling raised demand that Republicans force a showdown over the debt ceiling.

This always ends badly, because however much Americans might want spending reduced in the abstract, even most Tea Partiers vehemently oppose cutss in entitlement programs which benefit them.

There would be terrible consequences if the federal government were to default.  The chances this would happen is approximately zero, because the Treasury will receive in tax revenues far more than what is required to pay what’s owed on Treasury paper that comes due.

But that’s not how it will be reported.  Never forget who the main enemy is. The news media will blame any bad economic news that arises during and after a debt ceiling dispute not on mammoth deficits and reckless spending by Democrats, but on Republicans for forcing a confrontation.

Americans hate Obamacare.  If the standoff ends without there having been a threat of default, what people will remember about it months afterward is that Republicans fought against a program they despise; not that they posed a threat to programs they like.

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The foremost task of the strategist, said Carl von Clausewitz in "On War," is to distinguish the schwerpunkt (decisive point) from the nichtschwerpunkte (not decisive points). 

The schwerpunkt in this and all other fights between now and a year from November is to prepare the battlefield for the midterms. 

If this dispute ends with a majority of Americans thinking Republicans fought valiantly against Obamacare and reckless spending, but made reasonable and good faith efforts to negotiate and compromise which Democrats rebuffed, then Republicans will have won, whether or not they extract any concessions from Democrats.

It’s highly unlikely Republicans could win anything more than a token concession on Obamacare – like, say, repeal of the medical device tax even Dingy Harry said is stupid – because even if the Senate would pass it, Zero would veto it.

No matter.  Republicans have much more to gain than to lose if the Insane Clown Posse tries to implement Obamacare as scheduled.  Because TTPers are smart, civic-minded people, it’s difficult for many to comprehend just how low information low information voters are.  Most lofos have no idea what’s in store for them. But for the millions who’ve been blissfully unaware, technical glitches and rising premiums are no longer theoretical.  If you think Obamacare is unpopular now, wait until the lofos get the letters from their insurance companies telling them how much more they have to pay for their premiums.

Don’t fret that once subsidies begin in January, it’ll be too late to stop Obamacare.  Far more will be hurt by Obamacare than will be getting subsidies, and the sufferers have a higher propensity to vote.  And, as Rich Lowry notes: "at first only about 2 percent of people will receive subsidies, which are funneled through insurers rather than given to individuals directly."

It’s true that no major entitlement program has ever been repealed.  But Social Security and Medicare are popular, and were enacted with considerable Republican support.  Furthermore, Noemie Emery notes: "Medicare and Social Security never hurt anyone, and disrupted the lives of no actual voters. Obamacare does."

There is no comparison between Obamacare and Medicare, or between Obamacare and any other major piece of social legislation ever enacted in American history, because no other was ever adopted on so narrow and partisan a basis. 

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Nor does it matter very much whether Republicans wring any concessions from Democrats on spending.  There is no concession Democrats could conceivably make that would prevent the awful reckoning with arithmetic that is inevitable now, given Zero’s reckless spending.

What Republicans must do is to avoid taking some of the blame for the consequences.  Republicans have nothing to lose and much to gain by having the standoff continue for another week.  But it must end before the news media are given an excuse to blame the GOP for economic troubles.

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The biggest difference between this shutdown and the one in 1995 is that Zero is no Bill Clinton.  He’s flailing.  His ham-fisted efforts to inflict pain indicate he learned nothing from the failure of that tactic in the sequester battle. He tried to talk the stock market into tanking.  Then he seemed to denounce the right to strike.  Even his supporters don’t like his tone.

We might – despite the odds against us – be able to win this skirmish as well as the war.  But what’s important is that we win the war.

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This week the glass is a lot more full than it was last week. My heroes of the week are the WWII vets who resisted the fascists.  I’m off to drink a toast to them.  I hope you all have a great weekend!