We have not just Obamacare unraveling, not just the Obama administration unraveling, not just the Democratic majority of the Senate [unraveling], but we could be looking at the collapse of American liberalism. Obamacare is the big thing for them. The biggest in a hundred years.
--Charles Krauthammer, in a somewhat premature ejaculation of devilish delight
One scarcely knows where to begin--or, rather, whether to even bother--with such muddled hyperbole.
Obamacare isn't "unraveling." Yes its Website sucks, but it's also true that the overall program's slow-going enrollment mirrors Massachusetts' experience under Romneycare. We are a nation of procrastinators, which in this embarrassing instance is probably a good thing. The Website will be fixed, which to some liberals is a bad thing, since Obamacare's success will only retard the inevitable arrival of single-payer--which is genuine liberalism, while unnecessarily complicated Obamacare leans far more toward Krauthammerism.
Point goes to Charles on "the Obama administration [is] unraveling." On the other hand every administration episodically unravels, although Obama's has hardly sunk to the abominations of Nixon's Watergate, Reagan's Iran-Contra, or Bush II's Iraq. And Charles, your rhetorical serve is late. I've been bemoaning the Obama administration's political unraveling for the last eleven months. The president needs a fresh team, and in time, I suspect, he'll wake up and get himself one.
As for Senate Democrats' unraveling, what's of far greater historic noteworthiness was their fleeting unity during the Krauthammer party's stupendously idiotic government shutdown. Senate Dems are now merely back to normal--bickering, cowering, and splintering.
Charles' final muddle--"we could be looking at the collapse of American liberalism. Obamacare is the big thing for them. The biggest in a hundred years"--I should best treat collectively, and swiftly: Are you fucking joking, Charles?
Authentic American liberalism began collapsing about a half-century ago under the later Johnson administration, the oppression of Vietnam, and immense waves of white backwash. It has since reigned tyrannically only in the diseased, paranoid, propagandistic minds of Krauthammer Inc. Liberalism's mirage feeds the far right, which, being programless, can thrive only in the face of an imaginatively monstrous foe.
By now, in the 21st century, liberalism is the new conservatism. It's already clicheish to note that Obamacare is profoundly conservative in its conception, that deficit reduction has sadly displaced massive Keynesian pump-priming, and that liberalism's overriding mission these days is simply to preserve our traditional social safety nets of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
None of this is to argue that Krauthammer Inc. doesn't believe its delusions. It has hated so intensely and its ideological star chamber has echoed so thunderingly, and for so long, it eagerly interprets every Obamian hiccup as a historic, bunkered collapse.