Obama Lied, Healthcare Coverage Died

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Obama Lied, Healthcare Coverage Died

By Matthew Vadum

Although federal officials have known for at least three years that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage, that didn’t stop President Obama from lying repeatedly, reassuring voters the law would not adversely impact their existing coverage.

In an uncharacteristically media-savvy move aimed at capitalizing on current affairs, 

Republicans compiled a list of 13 Democrats –including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)– who deceived voters by obediently repeating Obama’s lies.

Providing another ground for impeachment to pile on to the growing list of Obama’s high crimes and misdemeanors, NBC News reported that four sources “deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act” said that

“50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law.”

Many of those required to buy more expensive new policies will experience “sticker shock,” the sources said.

The administration generated an estimate in July 2010 that stated “that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them,” according to NBC.

But President Obama, who said the year before, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still promising in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

Soros and Hillary Take on America

My Oct. 29, 2013 article from FrontPage Magazine:

Soros and Hillary Take on America

By Matthew Vadum

Radical anti-American billionaire George Soros is going all-in for Hillary Clinton’s yet to be officially declared run for the presidency in 2016.

And because Soros’s wealthy leftist friends often follow his lead, a tsunami of early money may be poised to swamp the former U.S. secretary of state’s zygotic campaign.

Soros is lending his name to the “Ready for Hillary” super PAC, giving $25,000 to snag a co-chair post on the organization’s National Finance Committee. Soros’s political director Michael Vachon confirmed Soros’s involvement with the super PAC.

“George Soros is delighted to join more than one million Americans in supporting Ready for Hillary,” Vachon said. “His support for Ready for Hillary is an extension of his long held belief in the power of grassroots organizing.” (Soros also gave $2,300 to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.)

After pledging for the umpteenth time to abandon electoral politics, Soros keeps allowing himself to be pulled back in. A currency speculator and convicted inside-trader, Soros is a practiced hand-wringer who frequently tells gullible reporters he is getting out of electoral politics altogether. This is his mantra between elections even though he never actually follows through on the threat.

Soros is now spreading his wealth around to help a slew of Democrats in future elections.

In addition to the “Ready for Hillary” donation, so far In 2013 Soros has given: $1,500 to challenger Sean Eldridge (D-NY19); $2,600 to Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.); $2,600 to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); $20,000 to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; and $2,500 to Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Minn.) campaign, along with a separate $2,500 to the political committee, Franken MVPs.

Soros has also given more than $100 million to groups that support “immigrant rights,” immigration amnesty, and open borders since 1997. The idea is to flood America with reliably Democratic future voters who will support Soros’s extreme policy agenda.

The ObamaCare Meltdown

My Oct. 25, 2013 article from FrontPage Magazine:

The ObamaCare Meltdown

By Matthew Vadum

Sometimes politics imitates life.

It turns out the pregnant, diabetic woman who nearly fainted in President Obama’s arms at the Obamacare damage-control press event Obama held this week, isn’t herself sold on Obamacare.

The experience of Californian Karmel Allison is a metaphor for the entire rollout of the healthcare exchanges. Failure after failure, glitch after glitch, and spin, spin, spin. Allison was part of the president’s embarrassing media event this week in which a few Americans who somehow managed to sign up for Obamacare online were paraded for the dupes of the mainstream media to swoon over.

Allison’s near-collapse was captured on live TV as she was suffering a dizzy spell. Allison isn’t sure if she will sign up for Obamacare but the Obama White House wheeled her out in public as an example of someone who needs Obamacare. According to the White House:

Karmel Allison was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when she was nine years old. She has stayed on the same insurance ever since, despite constantly rising costs, for fear she would not be able to find a plan that would cover her due to her pre-existing condition. Allison recently began researching her options on CoveredCA and has publically [sic] described her experience as finally feeling equal to others, including her young and healthy husband, when it comes to access to coverage.

Obamacare isn’t likely to help Allison who reportedly prefers her current coverage. She’s far from alone as Americans experience sticker shock as their health insurance premiums skyrocket — assuming they haven’t had their policies canceled outright.

Meanwhile, a Canadian company is taking the blame for the failed architecture of healthcare.gov, the federal Obamacare enrollment website. CGI Federal Inc., the primary contractor on the new website and a subsidiary of Montreal, Quebec-based CGI Inc., is in turn blaming the bunged up Oct. 1 launch of the site on a subcontractor.

George Soros’s Illegal Alien Guerrilla Activists

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

George Soros’s Illegal Alien Guerrilla Activists

By Matthew Vadum

Radical community organizers and illegal aliens are stepping up their in-your-face campaign against the nation’s immigration laws by illegally using physical force to prevent federal officials from carrying out lawful deportations.

Given that illegal immigrants got here by breaking the law, their continued lawbreaking activity shouldn’t be all that surprising. It certainly doesn’t bother President Obama, who won’t do anything about these abusive protests because he agrees with the activists.

In recent weeks activists across America complaining about high deportation rates have used chains and pipes to bind themselves to the tires of buses that transport illegals slated for deportation to court. They have also snarled traffic on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and blocked the entrance to a federal detention center.

In Tucson, Ariz., they surrounded local police who stopped two illegals. A hundred police officers were dispatched to deal with protests at two sites in the city.

More unlawful activity is coming, they say.

A defiant Marisa Franco, campaign organizer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), is helping to lead the Left’s assault on the rule of law. “The people will take power back into their own hands and set a true example of leadership that the Beltway will have to follow.”

Activists are taking the law into their own hands “out of frustration and impatience,” said Franco. “Immigrant communities who are losing 1,100 loved ones every day to deportation cannot wait for Congress to end its political games or for the president to rediscover his moral compass,” she whined.

NDLON is one of the worst of the illegal alien groups. NDLON relentlessly hounds cities to establish “day laborer centers” to help illegals find work and fights loitering laws that make finding work more difficult. It works with labor organizations such as AFL-CIO to unionize day laborers and pushes lawmakers to apply U.S. labor law to illegal immigrants. By fighting for the so-called rights of illegal immigrants, NDLON and its ilk make it easier for illegals to stay stateside, which in turn encourages others to enter the U.S. illegally.

Nowadays NDLON has reason to be optimistic. One of its spiritual leaders, left-wing extremist Thomas Perez, is now U.S. secretary of labor. Perez was previously president of Casa de Maryland, a notorious advocacy group for illegal aliens funded by America-hating philanthropist George Soros and the dead communist leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

The World According to Andrea Mitchell

My article from the Oct. 4, 2013 issue of American Thinker:

The World According to Andrea Mitchell

By Matthew Vadum

In an incident ignored by the media, race-baiter extraordinaire Andrea Mitchell and other big-name journalists candidly exposed their bigotry and racial prejudices at a friendly forum in the nation's capital last year.


In an unusually candid conversation, mainstream media stars Mitchell, David Gregory, and Dana Milbank let loose in an orgy of Caucasian self-flagellation during a panel discussion titled, "Media: Race & Politics - The Impact of Race in Politics 2012," at the National Action Network's conference in Washington, D.C.  

The left-wing street thug group is headed by none other than Jew-hating homophobe and Obama ally Al Sharpton.


Now's a good time to bring this up as Mitchell, one of the biggest Obama supplicants on the boob tube, improbably receives the National Press Club's highest honor, the Fourth Estate Award, at a gala banquet tonight in the capital city.  Mitchell is receiving the prize even though it is designated for "a journalist who has made significant contributions to the field through a lifetime of excellence."


Mitchell is NBC's Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and host of MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports."


The panel discussion, which took place April 13, 2012, ought to be old news, but it didn't make the news at all: no media outlets got around to reporting it at the time.  Presumably they weren't interested because they agreed with the speakers and didn't consider their comments controversial.  Of course, April 13 last year was two days after George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin.  (Martin's mourning parents made an appearance at the conference.)


The Sharpton-sponsored gabfest offers a window into why Mitchell's co-workers, the left-wing propagandists of NBC, doctored an audio recording of Zimmerman's call to emergency 9-1-1 dispatchers to make him look racist.


Mitchell and other panelists essentially laid out their race-baiting journalistic philosophy, giving away a chapter of the racial arsonist playbook.  These activists believe in outcome-based journalism, twisting and inventing facts, lying, and distorting in order to inject race as an issue where it doesn't belong.

NBC Liberals Fan Sharpton’s Flames of Racial Resentment at Private Event

On Oct. 8, 2013 Newsbusters published a modified version (below) of my Oct. 4, 2013 American Thinker article, "The World According to Andrea Mitchell."

Here's the Newsbusters piece:

NBC Liberals Fan Sharpton’s Flames of Racial Resentment at Private Event

By Matthew Vadum

In an incident ignored by the media, race-baiter extraordinaire Andrea Mitchell and other big-name journalists candidly exposed their bigotry and racial prejudices at a friendly forum in the nation's capital last year.

In an unusually candid conversation, mainstream media stars Mitchell, David Gregory, and Dana Milbank let loose in an orgy of Caucasian self-flagellation during a panel discussion titled, "Media: Race & Politics -- The Impact of Race in Politics 2012," at the National Action Network's conference in Washington, D.C.  The left-wing street thug group is headed by none other than Jew-hating Obama ally Al Sharpton.

Now's a good time to bring this up as Mitchell, one of the biggest Obama supplicants on the boob tube, improbably received the National Press Club's highest honor, the Fourth Estate Award.  Mitchell is receiving the prize even though it is designated for "a journalist who has made significant contributions to the field through a lifetime of excellence."

Mitchell is NBC's Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and host of MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports."

The panel discussion, which took place April 13, 2012, ought to be old news, but it didn't make the news at all: no media outlets got around to reporting it at the time.  Presumably they weren't interested because they agreed with the speakers and didn't consider their comments controversial.  Of course, April 13 last year was two days after George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin.  (Martin's mourning parents made an appearance at the conference.)

The Sharpton-sponsored gabfest offers a window into why Mitchell's co-workers, the left-wing propagandists of NBC, doctored an audio recording of Zimmerman's call to emergency 9-1-1 dispatchers to make him look racist.

ACORN is Back!

My post from the American Thinker blog on Oct. 16, 2013 is below. It is a shorter version of my article "Obama's Secret Collaboration with ACORN Bosses" that ran the day before at FrontPage Magazine.

ACORN is Back!

By Matthew Vadum

Operatives of the disgraced radical group ACORN continue to advise the Obama administration and guide its destructive far-left policies years after the group filed for bankruptcy.


Good-government group Judicial Watch has discovered through Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests that former ACORN Housing mouthpiece Bruce Dorpalen, now head of the National Housing Resource Center (NHRC), has been meeting with and advising senior Obama administration officials on housing policy, gumshoe Matthew Boyle of Big Government reports.
Like a con artist trying to escape his criminal past, ACORN Housing legally changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) after the devastating "pimp and pro" videos surfaced in 2009. In those undercover videos masterminded by conservative activists James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles, ACORN and ACORN Housing intake workers were shown providing advice on setting up a brothel for pedophiles and breaking other laws. A year later the controlling entity in the ACORN network, ACORN Inc., filed for bankruptcy after Congress canceled its taxpayer funding and left-wing foundations abandoned it in droves.

Obama’s Secret Collaboration with ACORN Bosses

My article from the Oct. 17, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Obama’s Secret Collaboration with ACORN Bosses

By Matthew Vadum

Former officers of the disgraced radical group ACORN are still advising the Obama administration and guiding its catastrophic far-left policies almost three years after the group filed bankruptcy.

Former ACORN Housing public affairs director Bruce Dorpalen, who now runs the National Housing Resource Center (NHRC), has been meeting with and advising senior Obama administration officials on housing policy, according to good-government group Judicial Watch. The watchdog discovered the secret collaborations after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request.

Like a grifter running away from a criminal past, ACORN Housing formally changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) after devastating undercover videos surfaced in 2009. In those videos, masterminded by conservative activists James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles, ACORN and ACORN Housing intake workers were shown providing advice on setting up a brothel for pedophiles and breaking other laws. The videos launched the late Andrew Breitbart’s website Big Government and generated leftist apoplexy across America.

At the time, ACORN apologists like Joe Conason, Rachel Maddow, David Sirota, and a menagerie of other media Marxists tried to defend ACORN by falsely claiming that the videos had been doctored. A year later the controlling entity in the ACORN network, ACORN Inc., filed bankruptcy after Congress canceled its taxpayer funding and left-wing foundations sprinted away from the group as hard as they could.

“How is it, after the scandals of ACORN and its contribution to the housing crash, that this organization’s former leadership is still able to guide federal housing policy?” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “It goes to show that Barack Obama truly is the president from ACORN.”

Fox News quotes me in article about ACORN's Obamacare navigators

Fox News quotes me today on its website in an article about ACORN's Obamacare navigators.

Hollywood’s Obamacare Zombies

Here is my article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Hollywood's Obamacare Zombies

By Matthew Vadum

If you’re sick and tired of TV news broadcasts spewing pro-Obamacare propaganda, get ready to be inundated with even more progressive health care proselytizing in the dramas and comedies that follow those news shows.

For this you have the left-wing California Endowment to thank. The radical philanthropy is in the news because it is funding Obamacare public outreach efforts.

As Newsmax reports, the Obama administration is “turning its focus on prime time television series, using the influential platform and the power of celebrity to spread the word about its healthcare initiative.”

With the White House’s blessing, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Norman Lear Center, which has something called a “Hollywood, Health & Society program,” has accepted a $500,000 grant from the left-wing California Endowment to help TV producers condition the masses into supporting Obama’s Soviet-style health care program.

USC will aim to keep producers, writers, and directors up to speed so they can incorporate the latest information into their storylines. It will also generate public service announcements to match the TV shows’ storylines.

“Our experience has shown that the public gets just as much, if not more, information about current events and important issues from their favorite television shows and characters as they do from the news media and online resources,” said Martin Kaplan, head of the USC program. The grant “will allow us to ensure that industry practitioners have up-to-date, relevant facts on health care reform to integrate into their storylines and projects.”

The program, which also aids in the spread of Al Gore’s anthropogenic global warming hysteria, boasts that its “storytelling resources” have contributed to more than 550 “Hollywood, Health & Society-assisted storylines over the span of three years.”

It has placed left-wing political propaganda in a plethora of popular broadcast and cable TV shows including “All My Children,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Boston Legal,” “Breaking Bad,” “CSI,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Dexter,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Judging Amy,” “Law & Order,” “Mad Men,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” “NCIS,” “24,” “West Wing,” “The Wire,” and even the alleged CBS News program “60 Minutes.”

Veterans Break the Obama Blockade

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Veterans Break the Obama Blockade

By Matthew Vadum

Thousands of World War Two veterans fed up with President Obama’s needlessly cruel closure of national shrines in order to put pressure on his political enemies, yesterday stormed the cordoned-off open-air Washington, D.C., memorial that was created to honor them.

In a touching moment that ought to warm every red-blooded patriots’ heart, nonviolent protesters removed barricades on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., erected by the National Park Service to keep veterans and other members of the public from enjoying the National World War Two memorial that was built with private funding.

In the middle of the day veterans carried some of the “barrycades,” or “barackcades,” as some are calling the metal hurdles used as barriers, a few blocks away to the White House to register their disgust with the petty-tyrant ways of President Obama.

Although many of the flag-carrying veterans were octogenarians who came to the demonstration in wheelchairs, they were met with a massive show of force by baton-wielding local police.

This was quite unlike the treatment afforded left-wing pro-immigration amnesty protesters whose demonstration on the National Mall last week authorities bent over backwards to accommodate. Police even let the activists erect a stage in the area that was supposed to be off-limits to the general public.

In an incident staged for the media, eight socialist pro-open borders members of the U.S. House of Representatives acted out last week in order to make police arrest them for disorderly conduct. Democratic lawmakers arrested included the usual suspects such as Islamist ally Keith Ellison (Minn.), Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), Charles Rangel (N.Y.), and John Lewis (Ga.).

After police massed Sunday to intimidate the assembled veterans, actor James Woods seemed to speak for normal Americans who are aghast at Obama’s tactics as he does petty, irritating things like shutting down national parks, scenic lookouts on highways, and bicycle paths in order to rankle voters in the hope they’ll project blame for the ongoing government shutdown onto Republicans.

Obama to Boehner: Drop Dead

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Obama to Boehner: Drop Dead

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama has rejected a proposed compromise from House Republicans that could have helped to end the congressional standoff that led to the now 11-day-old partial federal government shutdown.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) pitched a “clean” six-week increase with nothing in return to the community organizer in the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

As Big Government’s Matthew Boyle reports,

“Obama’s and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to completely reject any offer of a compromise from House Republicans confirms what most conservatives already know: Obama will not negotiate on anything (he has said as much numerous times over the past couple of weeks) unless he faces consequences for failing to do so.”

The entirely predictable response from the nation’s top Democrats throws a public spotlight on their intransigence, and in particular, on Obama’s refusal to compromise on anything, unless he’s harming America by shredding the nation’s nuclear deterrent or extending a welcoming hand to the al-Qaeda operatives who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

Conservatives had been hoping Republicans would use the leverage GOP leadership doesn’t seem to realize it has in Congress to kill Obamacare or at least throw a few wrenches in the works.

Republicans’ reasonableness and generosity (with other people’s money) was rewarded with a swift kick in the teeth.

Boehner apparently succumbed to the relentless stream of horror propaganda from the fiscally illiterate Chicken Littles of the mainstream media and went to Obama with a no-strings attached “temporary” debt ceiling increase. Of course, there is no reason to grovel before Obama who has a pathetic 37 percent approval rating at the moment as Americans recoil from the president’s petty shutdown-related torments but Republicans did it anyway.

Fox News quotes me in a story about NPR and PBS

Fox News quotes me in a news story about how NPR and PBS are continuing to receive government funding despite the so-called shutdown.

Here’s the relevant passage:

However, one expert we spoke to said loopholes enable the CPB and other nonprofits like it to receive federal funding while still claiming independence.

“CPB is a nonprofit corporation that is technically separate from the government. So is NeighborWorks, a nonprofit that receives congressional appropriations, just as CPB does. NeighborWorks helped cause the housing bubble; CPB provides the propaganda that anesthetizes the public, preventing people from laying blame for failed policies at the door of the government,” said Matthew Vadum, senior editor at the Capital Research Center. 

“Keeping a distance by incorporating these entities affords the government plausible deniability when the two nonprofits mess up.”

Elderly Veterans Feel Obama’s Wrath

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Elderly Veterans Feel Obama’s Wrath

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama’s Machiavellian drive to hurt and irritate Americans to win the budget fight kicked into high gear this week as jackbooted police refused to allow World War II veterans to make a pilgrimage to the open-air Washington, D.C., memorial that was created to honor them.

As a whiff of fascism blows through the nation’s capital, the president is demonstrating to the whole world how revoltingly out-of-control the hyper-bloated U.S. government is. Obama is doing petty, irritating things like needlessly shutting down national parks in order to rankle voters in the hope they’ll blame Republicans for the ongoing government shutdown. Liberals, in typical fashion, predict apocalypse because of the shutdown. In reality, Americans are barely noticing that Uncle Sam is taking a nap.

Around two dozen members of Congress, including Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas), have been ignoring the guards and conducting their own tours of the National World War Two Memorial on the National Mall. They’ve been leading the “Honor Flight” veterans around the barriers now popularly called “barrycades” to show them the national shrine that honors them for their service. Many of the veterans are making these trips for the first time but they are so advanced in age it may also be their last visit to the site.

The National Park Service claims the memorial and the entire National Mall area had to be closed because of the ongoing government shutdown.

In reality, it’s a case of the eminently impeachable President Obama punishing the American people, sadistically causing them pain for no reason other than to get them mad at his political enemies.

Blogger Doug Ross deconstructs Obama’s nonsense, likening the president “to a petulant six-year old throwing a temper tantrum when he doesn’t get his own way.”

ACORN Crooks on the March for Obamacare

My article from today's issue of FrontPage Magazine:

ACORN Crooks on the March for Obamacare

By Matthew Vadum

A corrupt union ringleader who orchestrated massive campaigns involving identity fraud in furtherance of voter fraud and who covered up a million-dollar embezzlement involving pension funds will soon have unfettered access to confidential information on thousands of people seeking health insurance.

The union thug is disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke whose shady union will soon be helping people enroll in Obamacare exchanges.

Rathke’s labor vehicle, United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans, announced on its Facebook page Sept. 15 that it was gearing up “to do mass enrollment and help navigate people into the marketplaces in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas under the Affordable Care Act!”

“Local 100′s role as a Navigator, suggest[s] the program is less about health care and more about building a new progressive infrastructure,” says longtime ACORN-watcher Mike Flynn of Breitbart.com.

The fact that Wade Rathke, a disreputable, radical left-wing community organizer, is allowed anywhere near the enrollment process ought to give all Americans pause. The only reason Rathke hasn’t been federally investigated for racketeering is because his allies control the federal law enforcement apparatus. President Obama pretends he has no connection to ACORN and Attorney General Eric Holder doesn’t care what laws have been broken because he approves of ACORN’s goals.

Of course, ACORN and the labor movement go way back. In 1979, ACORN created the United Labor Unions, which it used to organize low-wage, fast-food, and home healthcare workers in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.

Yes, that’s President Obama’s former employer, ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

ACORN is the nonprofit group that knowingly hired felons convicted of identity theft to work on voter registration drives, giving them custody of sensitive voter information.

As I showed in my ACORN/Obama expose, Subversion Inc., ACORN is also infamous for hiring felons without bothering to do background checks, storming hospital emergency rooms and city council chambers, using voter fraud to turn graveyards across the nation into Democratic electoral strongholds, using mob violence against bank executives and other shakedown targets, and for ruthlessly exploiting its own employees and going to court to seek an exemption from minimum wage laws.

The 400,000-member organization, which filed for bankruptcy almost three years ago, was the nation’s preeminent Saul Alinsky-inspired street protest group — and the creepiest by far.

It Doesn't Matter If the Obamacare Defunding Gambit Fails

My article from the Sept. 27, 2013, issue of American Thinker:

Matthew Vadum with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Awesome)

It Doesn't Matter If the Obamacare Defunding Gambit Fails

By Matthew Vadum

The current campaign to deprive President Obama's health care leviathan of the life-sustaining tax dollars it needs for full bureaucratic metastasis is what left-wingers call a consciousness-raising exercise. 


It matters next to nothing if current Republican efforts succeed in immediately defunding Obamacare.  That's because this is just the opening round of what promises to be a protracted struggle to restore sanity to the American health care system.  A temporary defeat at one juncture on the road to repeal isn't really a defeat at all, provided that it serves a larger purpose.  Obamacare, after all, wasn't enacted in a day and it won't be repealed in a day.


Both the Ted Cruz talkathon and the brinksmanship over the stop-gap government funding measure (called a "continuing resolution") epitomize purposeful political theater. 


Ignore the blatherskite spewing from GOP establishment talking heads like Karl Rove:  there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing political things strictly for public consumption even when there is a less-than-direct or less-than-obvious relationship between the things done and the desired results.  It's not somehow dishonest or dishonorable to do this, contrary to the protestations of the pompous pundits who suck up air in the Washington echo chamber.


In this age of instant everything, we tend to forget that politics isn't always about concrete, instantaneous results.  It's about symbolism.  It's about focusing the attention of people in order to educate them.  It's about framing the issues properly, telling stories, and planting memes in public spaces, allowing them to spread like dandelion seeds on a passing breeze.  That's how Americans were brainwashed into believing that Republicans are the "party of the rich" and gazillionaire George Soros's Democrats are the caring party of compassion.


But intellect by itself doesn't always serve champions of limited government well.  Sometimes showmanship and connecting with people on an emotional level is required to make good things happen.  All good salespeople understand this.  

America’s Obamacare Crisis

My article from the Sept. 26, 2013, issue of FrontPage Magazine:

America's Obamacare Crisis

By Matthew Vadum

Sen. Ted Cruz’s talking filibuster against Obamacare has helped to draw attention to the endless problems the program’s implementation is causing in society.

The 21 hour, 19 minute-long speech by Cruz, the junior Republican senator from Texas, that ended midday yesterday, served as a highly informative infomercial that detailed how the incipient entitlement program is boosting health insurance premiums, unemployment, and misery across the nation.

No one seems to think Obamacare is ready for prime time, except perhaps for the Obama administration and Democratic Party officials. An ABC/Washington Post poll shows 9 of 10 Americans don’t believe that the federal government, their state governments, and the health insurance industry are fully prepared to implement Obamacare. It is worth noting that in 16 ABC/Post polls since August 2009 Obamacare has never received majority support.

Moreover, six in 10 Americans (60%) now believe the federal government already has too much power, according to Gallup polls. Only 7 percent of Americans –that’s roughly one out of 14– believe the government doesn’t have enough power.

Yet President Obama sides with the statists who comprise the 7 percent.

This is the same President Obama who promised voters, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Columnist and bestselling author Michelle Malkin laments that Obamacare has caused her family to get booted out of its health insurance plan.