LORD, SAVE HIM FROM HIS SUPPORTERS:

Masters and Slaves of Deception (CHARLES M. BLOW, 9/22/09, NY Times)

The president should have treated health care reform the same way he treated the stimulus package — by personally helping to shape it and push it through from the start.

On Feb. 11, a Gallup poll found that 59 percent of Americans over all supported the economic stimulus package, but only 28 percent of Republicans supported it. This is not so different from the way Americans feel about health care. According to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released this month, 50 percent of Americans said that they favored “Barack Obama’s plan to reform health care,” compared with just 19 percent of Republicans.

The Democrats forged ahead with the stimulus package. The House passed it without a single Republican vote, and the Senate passed it with the help of three moderate Republicans.

Presidents get lots of bad advice, but recommending that he repeat the unpopular stimulus debacle is particularly looney.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2009 7:47 AM