In 1969 Odgen Phipps owned “Bold Ruler.” He agreed to breed two mares owned by Penny Chenery, “Hasty Matelda” and “Somethingroyal.” Instead of collecting the normal stud fee, they agreed to flip a coin. The winner would get first choice of foals. Phipps won the toss and he took a weanling foal from “Hasty Matelda.” Penny Chenery was stuck with the offspring of “Somethingroyal.” The mare gave birth to a chestnut colt in March 1969. That colt was named “Secretariat.” Secretariat went on to win the Triple Crown and is considered to be one of the best races horses in history. They even made a movie about him.
Odgen Pipps thought he scored big time when he won the coin toss. Instead he got a filly no one remembers, while Penny Chenery hit the jackpot. Peggy Chenery won big by losing that coin toss.
Democrats are celebrating because RINO Republicans caved and gave Harry Reid and President Obama a great victory. It looks like the government shutdown will soon be history and the debt ceiling crisis will be kicked down the road for a few more days. At first glance this looks really bad, because no one expects Republicans to grow a spine between now and January. This is beyond embarrassing. When you are beaten and humiliated by someone as inept as Harry Reid and Barack Obama, there is little room for optimism.
So we should all be depressed and discouraged, right? The disappointment in the spineless Republican establishment is well earned. But what exactly did Democrats gain and what did Republicans actually lose?
Republicans will get all of the blame for the government shutdown. Democrats will get all of the credit for keeping the status quo. But the status quo sucks. Democrats stood strong and tall in the face of adversity and saved the day. Well, actually, they didn’t save the day, they saved ObamaCare. They also spared Obama from cutting spending and reducing the deficit. They weren’t fighting for truth, justice and the American Way; they were fighting for ObamaCare and irresponsible government spending. Republicans are guilty of trying desperately to stop the madness.
If ObamaCare is a big success Democrats have won. If the economy thrives, in spite of the tax and spend policies, Democrats have won. If both those things are true, then Republicans deserved to lose and we are all better off. But are they true?
What if Republicans were right? What if ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster? What if the computer system is so bad that it will take months and perhaps years to fix? What if people find out that ObamaCare is horribly expensive? What if there are horror stories about people who can’t afford health insurance anymore because of the increased cost? What if people now have to pay a fine, because they can’t afford insurance? All of these things are already happening. It is a story so massive and compelling that it cannot and will not be ignored.
In addition, it is naïve to think that we can continue to increase spending and keep on borrowing indefinitely. At some point we are going to have to put our fiscal house in order. It is only a matter of time. Democrats did not fix the problem, they didn’t even acknowledge the problem, they just delayed dealing with the problem.
The main stream media will continue to spin the news and try to avoid covering the massive ObamaCare failure. But ultimately, they will have no choice. This kind of disaster becomes too big to ignore. There are already main stream media reports on ObamaCare that are devastating. They just haven’t been given much air time because everyone was hyperventilating over the shutdown and the debt ceiling. Now that this crisis is behind us, that will change.
Now think about this. Alan Dershowitz was on Piers Morgan. The goal was to get Dershowitz to argue that Ted Cruz “arguably” could have violated the constitution. But Dershowitz did a lot more than that. Piers Morgan asked Dershowitz if he remembered Ted Cruz as a student at Harvard. I am sure that Morgan regrets asking that:
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: See, you taught Ted Cruz at Harvard.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Well, I’m not sure how much I taught him, but I sat in the front of the class while he was in the class raising his hand, always his right hand, making very intelligent points, and really winning debates all the time in the class including winning debates with his professors.
MORGAN: One of the best students you’ve had?
DERSHOWITZ: One of the sharpest students I’ve had in terms of analytic skills. I’ve had 10,000 students in my 50 years at Harvard. I write all about that in my book “Taking the Stand,” and I write about my great students. He has to qualify among the brightest of the students
MORGAN: So we have to assume from that, just in the extraordinary piece of insight into him – because he’s come really from nowhere to many people – we have to assume from that this is all part of a strategy. What do you think his strategy is?
DERSHOWITZ: I think he deeply believes what he’s doing. I don’t think of him so much as a tactical or strategic thinker. He’s deeply principled. He thinks he’s doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing, and he’s very hard to get off that principled argument. I saw that years ago when he was a student. He was not a compromiser. He was not somebody who tried to make friends by accepting what was then the political correctness of the day. If you want to defeat Ted Cruz, you have to appeal to his principles not to his tactics
Now think about this. We have one man who coasted through law school and went to work as a Community Organizer. As far as I can tell, Alan Dershowitz doesn’t even remember Barack Obama as a law student. The other man is one of the most brilliant men to ever attend Harvard. He went on to argue cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. He became Solicitor General of Texas, the type of position given to the very best trail attorneys. He is a highly principled man who will not compromise regarding his core values.
Don’t be too quick to assume that Barack Obama was the winner in this exchange.
Cruz arranged for Obama to be offered a clean resolution that would fund the entire government, including ObamaCare if he would just delay implementation for one year. Obama was outraged so instead he brought the government to the brink of default to get his way. Now it is almost impossible for Obama to order a delay in anything. Obama cannot do the one thing that might save ObamaCare. If Obama orders any kind of a delay, Ted Cruz will respond with the ultimate “I told you so.”
Check back in November 2014. Then decide who won and who lost.
TDM