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“We must pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”

– Nancy Pelosi, Former Speaker of the House

“Amazingly, the vast majority of legislators who voted for the Act three years ago still haven’t read it and still have no idea what is in it. Polling indicates that the American people dislike it more that ever but the politicians who don’t care about the desires of the people are forcing it down our throats.”

– Mark Meckler, President of Americans for Self-Governance and Co-Founder of Tea Party Patriots

American progressives have dreamed of government healthcare for a century. It was fulfilled when President Obama’s signature bill become law in 2010. The accomplishment required the orchestrated cooperation of the national media, parliamentary trickery in both Houses of Congress (including passage in the Senate by “reconciliation” after the election of the 41st Republican) and crony capitalists in the Pharmaceutical and Health Care Industries. Finally, a Supreme Court Chief Justice who will live in infamy, codified the disaster by inexplicably reinterpreting and rewriting the bill in his 2012 decision. By hook and by crook the Left finally realized their 100 year goal.

This debacle was visited upon us without one Republican vote. It was passed over the objections of the majority of the American people. Congress mocked and ignored the largest protests on the National Mall in the history of our nation and told us that “we will have to pass it so you can find out what is in it.” Twenty-seven states filed suit to overturn the bill. Its constitutionality was overturned in 6 lower court decisions. Running against Obama Care enabled the Republicans to win 65 House seats in 2010; the largest party shift in 72 years. Republicans continued running against Obama Care in 2012 and retained control of “The People’s House.” The bill was so unpopular that President Obama didn’t emphasize it in his 2012 re-election campaign and congressional democrats literally ran away from it.

All that was needed to re-take the White House was to unify the party behind any nominee who could articulate a clear alternative to big government in general and Obama Care in particular. Shockingly, the Republican establishment managed to nominate the one presidential candidate who had actually implemented government healthcare in his own state! Not surprisingly, faced with a muddled choice, millions of conservative voters stayed home and Mr. Obama was re-elected.

Now we find ourselves at the precipice. There is one final opportunity to avert the irreversible decline of the nation. But Republican leadership tells us that principled opposition is foolish and will cost the GOP seats in the mid-term elections. These sophisticates tell us that Ted Cruz and his Tea Party supporters are taking us over the cliff. That if we will just be patient, Obama Care will collapse under it’s own weight. All we have to do is simply let it go into affect and the people will demand repeal of its onerous regulations, privacy invasions, suffocating costs and scarcity of quality care.

Really? Since when does congress repeal regulations that burden, badger and harass small business and law-abiding taxpayers? The Internal Revenue Service is the most hated bureaucracy in the history of the republic and has been exposed as a partisan enforcer used to target and intimidate the political opponents of this administration. Is its budget or authority being reduced? On the contrary, the agency has received additional funding and new powers to hire 16,000 new agents who will police our compliance with Obama Care. No hopelessly flawed government program or out of control agency has ever been repealed or eliminated. Instead they are sustained by additional funding to hire more Federal bureaucrats who impose even more burdensome regulations. This is the unmistakable history of the Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Student Loans, Freddy Mac and Ginny Mae Mortgages, Ethanol mandates, Farm programs, as well as Solar and Wind subsidies. These programs have been proven to be riddled with fraud, enrich the connected, distort the free market, fail in their objectives and bankrupt the treasury. But they are seldom reformed and never repealed. Ronald Reagan famously said that the “closest thing to eternal life on earth is a Federal Program.” His prognosis will be the legacy of Obama Care. Our Republican leaders, who have lived most of their adult lives in Washington, know this very well.

The looming burden of Obama Care is the major component of the President’s assault on the private sector. And make no mistake, the private economy and small business in particular is under assault. The amorphous bill, characterized by uncertainty, overwhelming complexity, unknown enforcement mechanisms, astronomical cost, and oppressive penalties has already decimated job creation and the law hasn’t even taken full affect. To spare his union, big business and congressional buddies the pain of “hope and change” the president has awarded over 1200 waivers, a one year deferral and a sweet subsidy to the boys on the Hill. But those destined to toil under the edicts of Obama Care are announcing layoffs by the thousands in anticipation of the train wreck. The full implementation of this soviet style bill will devastate the nation. Yet establishment Republicans from Karl Rove, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to the republican leadership howl that Ted Cruz may cost them congressional seats in 2014. As the Titanic takes on water they are busy fighting over the luxury suites.

Of course the establishment Republicans protest that they too want to defund Obama Care, just in a “smarter” way. Yes, the establishment is always smarter than the people who make the country work. That’s why they have chosen to join the law passing, regulation promulgating, tax code writing political class. May I remind you that these same “smart” Republicans were also too “smart” to support Ronald Reagan in 1976 or in 1980 and reluctantly joined him only after every attempt to derail his candidacy had been defeated. They dismissed him as “unelectable” and “outside of the main stream.” Of course now they claim to have been part of the great Reagan revolution….kind of like they profess to want to defund Obama Care.

Speaking for the establishment wing, John McCain complains that Cruz’s plan to defund Obama Care is unrealistic because the Democrats will never agree to it. What’s more, he reminds us that “elections have consequences” and the democrats won. Of course, when President Bush was elected to a second term and Republicans held both houses of Congress Senator McCain was only too happy to cross the aisle and help torpedo the president’s judicial appointments. You will recall that McCain, six other establishment republicans and 7 Democrats helped formed the “Gang of 14” in 2005 that would dictate which judicial nominees would receive confirmation votes. In so doing, he undercut President Bush and Majority Leader Bill Frist (Rep., TN).At the time Republicans controlled the White House, the House of Representatives and enjoyed a 55 to 45 advantage in the Senate. Apparently, “elections have consequences” only when the Democrats control the Senate. So much for John McCain.

The Republican establishment is zealous in its defense of the GOP. Ted Cruz is committed to the preservation of liberty. The Senate leadership is protective of the sacrosanct rules of the upper chamber. Cruz is passionate for the Constitution of the United States. Senior republicans would argue that the preservation of the GOP and the liberty of the people are inseparable. But the American people increasingly see both political parties as co-conspirators against freedom.

President Obama is committed to progressive ideology and desires to subordinate a free people to an all-powerful federal government. He cannot do so without a compliant press and a feckless opposition party and he enjoys both. Mr. Obama knows that socialized medicine is the poison pill that will set the country on an unalterable decent into statism that the left has envisioned since the days of Woodrow Wilson. Each day that conservatives hold the line against funding Obama Care the more shrill and unhinged the president and Majority Leader Reid have become. Everyday, more Americans reveal stories of cancelled policies, skyrocketing premiums or the dysfunctional health care web site. Everyday, companies announce more layoffs and convert more employees to part time. The president becomes more irritable, the national media becomes more partisan and the bill becomes more unpopular. These trends should embolden the republican leadership but instead they are unnerved and lash out against Ted Cruz and the Tea Party. The battle to defund Obama Care was clearly a fight the establishment didn’t want to wage. Now we must wonder if it’s a battle they truly want to win.