Republican leaders are putting the demands of 30 Tea Party members over 300 million Americans.
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Not quite David.  The statement should have read that 30 Tea Party members are putting 300 million Americans before unreasonable spending demands of the Democratic leadership in the Senate and irresponsible economic policies put forth by the White House.

President Obama is somewhat infamous for his use of a teleprompter.  He seemingly can’t memorize speeches so his handlers feed him the words to say.  Now it seems he can’t sign his name either.  Congress recently passed a four year extension to the Patriot Act but because the current law was due to expire at midnight last Thursday and the President was in France it meant either the current law would expire temporarily or the President had to sign the bill into law with an autopen.

The autopen is typically used for signing letters and things of a less constitutional nature.  Now while I wholeheartedly support the Patriot Act I now believe the new law is not legally enforceable because it has not been legally signed into law.  For a bill to become law congress must pass it and the President must sign it, not his surrogates, not a machine, the President and the President alone.

We will now most likely be treated to ACLU running to court clamoring that the law isn’t legally in effect and they, as much as it pains me to say, have a legal point.  Now as tough as I am on Obama about the act itself (using the autopen) the circumstances that have led us here are squarely on the shoulders of congress’ inability to pass the extension in a reasonable amount of time that would allow the President to have legally signed it before he left for Europe.

How much longer will we continue to kick this can down the road?  When will congress make a commitment to our long term security and make this act and its early provisions that have since been stripped permanent?

In 1993 Bill Clinton ran on the economy and succeeded in beating George HW Bush on that issue in spite of the fact that Bush had in fact led the country out of the recession by the election.  Clinton felt he was invincible so he let his wife take on the issue of healthcare.  The thing that Clinton underestimated was that the economy was already rebounding and people were positive on the economic situation.  As such people didn’t see healthcare as that big a problem that required a government takeover and as such it went down to defeat.

So we move forward to the last eight years where we have had a drumbeat of Democrats, in congress and the media, telling people just how bad everything was.  This in spite of the fact that for much of the George W Bush years the economy has been booming.  The media succeeded in talking the economy into recession in late 2008 along with a democrat controlled congress that created the mortgage mess.

We now have the perfect storm for Democrats.  They have created circumstances where we have unemployment near 10%, we have healthcare costs through the roof mostly because trial lawyers have driven the cost of malpractice insurance through the roof.  We have government takeovers of the auto industry, and the banking industry.  We haven’t seen misery like this since the days of Jimmy Carter.

So now there is a narrow window of opportunity for Obama and Democrats to pass socialized medicine.  i call it a narrow window because the have to be careful, they have to orchestrate this takeover and spin it so it appears that they are helping everyone.  If people perceive this for what it is, another power grab by liberals and Obama then they could see a backlash.  People are already weary of the takeovers they’ve seen in the automotive and banking sectors.

The Democrats running congress are talking of big tax increases, the global warming bill isn’t widely supported by voters but congress is beholden to the environuts that elected them.  The more they force this stuff down the throats of the American people the greater the consequences in 2010 and 2012.

So in the end it appears that Democrats have created the circumstances under which socialized medicine may be possible.  Maybe they learned from 1994 but will the country be better off from the lessons learned?  I doubt it.