Tyranny of the Minority

One of the conservatives talking points against health care reform is that the public is against the the reform bill, but a deeper look at the numbers show that only an overwhelmingly solid support by conservatives against the bill have managed to skew the overall numbers.

In a recent review of the polling numbers on fivethirtyeight.com it was pointed out that nearly 90% of liberals support health care reform bill and more than 55% of moderates support the bill. Seeing those numbers the only way the public would be against the bill would be for less than 10% of conservatives to support health care reform, which apparently is the case.

So conservatives, who were routed at the ballot box in 2008, are thwarting the will of people through distortions of the health care bill. While it may seem like a good strategy now, Democrats and Obama were never going to get much support from conservatives so the fact that they oppose his policies is pretty meaningless, unless they can overwhelm the will of liberals and moderates.

If the bill is passed, the economy continues to improve, and the military continues to take out members of the Taliban, the Republican Party is going to face a tough election with only limited supporters.

But Republicans have little to offer other than tax cuts and less regulation (and we all know how well that turned out) so the only option they have is to attempt to impose their minority views on the majority.

Apparently Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts didn't care for President Obama's criticism of the recent decision on campaign finance uttered during the State of the Union address.

Roberts wondered why court members attend the annual speech as it has turned into a pep rally. Conservatives jumped on his views as the Outrage of the Day. How dare Obama criticize the court and how dare he do it in front of them! In addition, Justice Alito was praised for his mouthing of "not true" during Obama's criticism.

Unfortunately this is just another in a series of contrived events dredged up by conservatives so they have something to complain about, rather than focusing on how their policies messed up the country during the past decade.

Seriously, think about it. Once a year the President makes an address to Congress and the public (including the court) outlining the vision for the administration. Many times that agenda can include legislative fixes to court decisions. What was Obama supposed to do? Stop and ask the Justices to leave the room so he can talk about his agenda without hurting any one's feelings?

Now if this was a conservative making the speech it would have been full of condescension (see any of Ann Coulter's books) and the very same people criticizing Obama would have been approving of the message. Instead it's just another chance for conservatives to complain about Obama, with the hope of hurting his popularity.

And tomorrow's story is - Obama sure is getting criticized a lot. See the self fulfilling prophecy?