Road to the Middle Class - by Christopher Chantrill

CONSERVATIVES and other opponents of ObamaCare have been flapping on about "consent of the governed" as the Democrats twist this way and that to get out of their box canyon.

Michael Barone has just summed up the Dems' problem pretty well. So let's go with it. He writes of three cases to consider when trying to pass legislation:

You can pass popular legislation on party-line votes, and you usually get some support from the other side, even if unsolicited.

The Dems passed Medicare on this basis, and on final passage they picked up Republican votes. But what about unpopular legislation? The way to do it is the method used to pass the TARP bailout of the banks.

TARP was passed, after one misfire in the House, by bipartisan coalitions of members of both parties with safe seats. Members of both parties with vulnerable seats, with only a few exceptions, were left to protect themselves by voting against it.

But, of course, that is not the strategy being used by the Dems to pass ObamaCare. They thought they could ram it through on a party-line vote. Probably, they thought, a year ago, that they would be able to swing public opinion their way and bully the Republicans into voting for it. But they failed to move public opinion. In fact, every time that ObamaCare gets into the news the president's approval numbers go down, as yesterday when the president hit -21 on the bellwhether Rasmussen Poll. The poll for the last few months has shown steady erosion in the president's strong supporters.

There's a reason it's hard to pass unpopular legislation on party-line votes. It's not the Senate rules. It's called democracy.

In other words, if you are trying to pass unpopular legislation and the opposition thinks that it is a bad idea and the American people also think that it's a bad idea you really have a problem.

Let's rehearse this into a simple set of rules.

Governing elite split, American people in favor: Pass
Governing elite united, American people opposed: Pass
Governing elite split: American people split: Pass
Governing elite split, Americn people opposed: Problem!

Everybody got it?

The Democrats are now trying to solve their problem by proposing to pass ObamaCare without even having a vote in the House. They are considering a rule in the House to "deem" it passed.

My advice to Dems. Don't do it. You cannot imagine the rage you will provoke if you try to get ObamaCare through by cheating. As the French 68ers said years ago, the whole point of bourgeois democracy is the process. It's the process that keeps people from forming a head of rebellion. Smash the process and you smash your legitimacy.

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| perm | comment(0) | 03/11/10 11:28 am ET

Conservatives as Reactionaries

LIBERALS JUST can't get enough of the idea that conservatives are reactionaries, trying to turn the clock back.So you would expect that the Wall Street Journal's tame liberal, Thomas Frank, would be eager to take a whack at the subject whenever he gets a convenient hook.Mostly though he is outraged that Glenn Beck hates college professor President Woodrow Wilson. OK, so Wilson vetoed prohibition...

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| perm | comment(0) | 03/10/10 11:41 am ET

By-the-numbers Conservatism

THERE ARE ALL kinds of conservatives and all kinds of conservatism.Some people say there are three kinds of conservatives: economic, social, and national-security.Then there's Ken Blackwell's six-legged stool: social conservatives, Christian conservatives, Second Amendment conservatives, economic conservatives, philosophical conservatives, national security conservatives.How many conservatives...

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| perm | comment(0) | 03/09/10 11:27 am ET

Lack of Trust in Dem Congress

I CAPTURED an interesting comment from former Majority Leader Tom DeLay over the weekend. He was critiquing the Pelosi operation in the house. Let's look at his comment in full.DeLay accused Democrats of “arrogance” after CNN host Candi Crowley asked DeLay how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have a Democrat-controlled House, Senate and White House, but haven’t...

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| perm | comment(0) | 03/08/10 11:23 am ET

Avoiding Conflict Avoidance

IN THE OFFICIAL liberal belief system, the key to it all is "conflict avoidance." Because if only we could avoid conflict then everyone could live in peace and justice.Er, no. Not quite, chaps. In reality, life in the world is all about conflict. We humans, occasionally, create a moment in which conflict recedes to the margin. But not really. Conflict still continues, but in a sublimated...

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| perm | comment(0) | 03/05/10 11:36 am ET

Obama's Four Porkies

EVERYTHING about ObamaCare is smoke and mirrors, starting with the idea that the system is broke. But the president did us the courtesy of actually listing the four things that ain't so in his health plan, writes Jon Ward of The Daily Caller. Ready?It's not a government takeover. OK, technically it isn't. But the government will increase government supervision by a very big leap. It's the...

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| perm | comment(0) | 03/04/10 11:33 am ET

The Consent of the Governed

TODAY, ACCORDING to reports, the president will announce that he is going for "reconciliation," the tactic of passing his huge ObamaCare reform through the Congress by a method that is intended to reconcile budget disagreements between the two houses of Congress.Some have said that in doing this, the president "crosses the Rubicon," after the famous act of Julius Caesar in marching his army...

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| perm | comment(0) | 03/03/10 11:02 am ET

Canada's Housing Non-Meltdown | 03/02/10 11:28 am ET
Pelosi's Forced March Politics | 03/01/10 11:08 am ET
The New Stupid Party | 02/26/10 9:17 am ET
Science's Big Problem | 02/25/10 11:55 am ET
This is not Obama's Rubicon | 02/24/10 10:37 am ET
The Box-Canyon Presidency | 02/23/10 11:16 am ET
The Problem with Tax Cuts(2) | 02/22/10 11:22 am ET
The Trouble with Specifics(1) | 02/19/10 11:04 am ET
Which Party Will Split FIrst? | 02/18/10 11:35 am ET
Culture War and Civil War | 02/17/10 11:38 am ET
You Just Don't Get It, Mr. President | 02/16/10 11:39 am ET
Confucius and the Community Organizer | 02/15/10 11:09 am ET
Dems Make Ryan's "Roadmap" the Issue | 02/12/10 10:35 am ET

| March blogs | February blogs |

OPED

Science's Big Problem

LAST WEEK DR. Judith Curry, climate scientist from Georgia Institute of Technology, admitted on What’s Up With That that climate scientists needed to do a better job of communication, in order to reestablish trust after the debacle of ClimateGate. In reply, both sides, warmist ...

| more | comment | 03/02/10

The Back-pocket Manifesto

This week the Tea Party conservatives launched their “| more | comment | 02/24/10

Liberals Say US Is Ungovernable. Again

Liberal Condescension Isn't the Problem

Budget Fun with Fannie and Freddie

RMC CHAPTER-A-DAY

RMC Contents

Chapter 1: After the Welfare State

Chapter 2: Down in South Carolina and Out in Brooklyn

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM among western cultural elites is that God is dead and we are well rid of him.... more

Chapter 3: Awakenings of Monotheism

Chapter 4: The Nineteenth Century From the Top Down

Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Century From the Bottom Up

RMC BOOKS

RMC Book of the Day

Gould, Philip, The Unfinished Revolution

RMC Books on Education

Andrew Coulson, Market Education
How universal literacy was achieved before government education

Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic
How we got our education system

James Tooley, Reclaiming Education
How only a market in education will provide opportunity for the poor

James Tooley, The Miseducation of Women
How the feminists wrecked education for boys and for girls

E.G. West, Education and the State
How education was doing fine before the government muscled in

RMC Books on Law

Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital
How ordinary people in the United States wrote the law during the 19th century

F. A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol 1
How to build a society based upon law

Henry Maine, Ancient Law
How the movement of progressive peoples is from status to contract

John Zane, The Story of Law
How law developed from early times down to the present

RMC Books on Mutual Aid

James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In
How the welfare state makes crime, education, families, and health care worse.

David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
How ordinary people built a sturdy social safety net in the 19th century

David Green, Before Beveridge: Welfare Before the Welfare State
How ordinary people built themselves a sturdy safety net before the welfare state

Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy
How the US used to thrive under membership associations and could do again

David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry
How modern freemasonry got started in Scotland

RMC Books on Religion

David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is booming in China

Finke & Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
How the United States grew into a religious nation

Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism
How progressives must act fast if they want to save the welfare state

David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish
How Pentecostalism is spreading across the world

Amazon.com Widgets

READINGS

Weak Tea or Strong Tea?

Lee Harris's analysis of the Tea Party movement.

The end of the road for Barack Obama?

Simon Heffer takes Obama apart.

MSM Doesn't Get It

cluelessness about the Tea Party movement from the MSM

A Better Path

Marvin Olasky reprises Hernando de Soto's Other Path

The President vs. Health-Care Reform

Holman Jenkins says it: the president doesn't understand health insurance.

> more

CCWUD PROJECT

cruel . corrupt . wasteful
unjust . deluded

Take the Test!

THE PROJECT

Work to restore the Road to the Middle Class. Here’s how. Ground it in faith. Grade it with education. Protect it with mutual aid. Defend it with the law. more>>

THE ARGUMENT

The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the king�s peace, the law of contract, and private property.