So much for these bizarre theories that President Barack Obama is toying with a grand triangulation strategy, whereby he abandons his Democratic congressional allies in the 2010 elections and allows Republicans to win and save his fiscal fat from the fire. The New York Times is reporting that Obama is unleashing yet another public relations blitz to sell his already passed but woefully unpopular health care bill, at least in part to help Democrats who supported the boondoggle.
As soon as Obama can spare the time to take a break from entertaining himself with publicly funded rock 'n' roll parties, he'll begin an Obamaganda campaign to convince the stubbornly unsophisticated majority that Obamacare is the panacea for not only their health needs but also the nation's financial difficulties. I wish I were being facetious.
The first stop on his tour will be Wheaton, Md., where he'll conduct a nationally televised stunt with senior citizens timed to coordinate with the mailing of the first batch of his magnanimous $250 rebate checks to Medicare beneficiaries to help pay for their medicines.
Why not? This president and his team of fellow Alinskyites are not particularly into governance. They can only dawdle, hyperventilate and scapegoat over the Gulf oil spill. They can only form fiscal commissions and make speeches about our accelerating fiscal crisis. They have no problem reverting to "community organizing," and that's what they plan to do in perpetuity -- at least on Obamacare.
The Times says the Wheaton event will be just the first in a series of "milestone moments" -- we'll call Wheaton a "senior moment" -- in which Obama "will weigh in" as various "consumer-friendly provisions" of Obamacare "take effect."
I'm just wildly speculating here, but I'm guessing Obama won't be holding similar town hall meetings to celebrate the more painful provisions of Obamacare or to answer questions about the many frauds he committed in the process of forcing passage of this bill.
For instance, I'm taking a stab that Obama won't be doing the Sunday talk show circuit to field questions about recent reports that Obamacare doesn't allocate nearly enough money to cover the estimated 5.6 million to 7 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions who will qualify for temporary high-risk insurance pools. I'm betting he won't respond substantively to the study by the Center for Studying Health System Change that Obamacare "could leave hundreds of thousands of potential participants with serious medical problems unable to obtain coverage" and that the $5 billion earmarked for the pools might cover as few as 200,000 people a year.
I'm also stepping out in conjecturing that Obama won't be going on his beloved Fox News to rebut claims by The Washington Examiner's fine editorial page editors that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "has resorted to sending millions of senior Americans a sales brochure that is packed with blatantly false claims about Obamacare."
But we are probably safe in assuming that Obama's targeting of seniors with the brochure and television blitzes is no accident. Indeed, The Hill reports that the administration and Democrats "have especially focused on seniors, who make up a crucial voting bloc in November and who traditionally show up at the polls in higher numbers than younger citizens."
But in fairness, I must confess that I've hedged my bets on the Fox News prediction, because the Times reports that former White House communications director Anita Dunn will have a major role in orchestrating the "milestone moments" campaign to deceive, er, inform the administration's subjects, er, public about the vast wonders of Obamacare. Dunn, you may recall, was the principal general in the administration's war against Fox News.
The Times assures us, though, that Dunn won't be alone. "A veritable army of outside groups" will be "orchestrating campaigns to echo the White House message." This "advocacy campaign ... will last until after the law is fully put into place in 2014." Heading up the effort will be none other than President Obama himself, who "intends to stand by his pledge" not to abandon Democrats who supported Obamacare. His senior adviser David Axelrod said Obama is eager to "campaign for folks who showed the courage to stand up. ... I think he'll do it with a special relish."
Here's hoping he does it with extra-special relish and mustard. He has helped ensure defeat for almost every candidate he's campaigned for to date. If this streak continues, his stamp of approval will be the figurative kiss of death for all candidates who would thwart the indispensable conservative effort to repeal and replace Obamacare.