Tambourines and Elephants

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, guesting for Bill Bennett this morning, shared a link to a list of vulnerable House members. Consider contacting these folks and express your position on H.R. 3590, a.k.a. “Patient Care, blah blah blah.” (You might know it as “Obamacare.”)

In his column today, Charles Krauthammer made the following analogy to the President’s position on the “Patient Care” bill debate:

Republicans did so well [in the healthcare summit], in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health-care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments), they are in favor.

Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However — life is a vale of howevers — suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed — say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak, and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Well put, Mr. K.