Romney Wins! . . . A Year Later

Today on NRO

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Stop worrying whether the president's statements conform to ossified standards of truth. Obama's Noble Lies.

RICH LOWRY: From Williamsburg to Silverlake, Barack Obama is yesterday's arugula. Obama Loses His Cool.

FRED FLEITZ: Acceptance of Iran's nuclear-enrichment efforts represents a steady erosion of U.S. resolve. Defining Compliance Down.

ALEC TORRES: A bus driver at Rutgers university says he was fired for praying over students; his bosses disagree. Fired for Praying?

SLIDESHOW: Midwest Tornadoes.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

November 19, 2013

Romney Wins! . . . A Year Later

Unbelievable. A new poll from ABC News this morning: "Registered voters divide numerically in Mitt Romney's favor, 49-45 percent, if they had a mulligan for the 2012 presidential election. While the difference between the two is within the poll's error margin, Obama's support is 6 points below his actual showing a year ago."

Now they tell us.

Dear America: This is what we were warning you about, but you wouldn't listen.

The New Rallying Cry: Obamacare Is 'Kind of Working' Already

There are a bunch of liberal commentators who are looking at the Obamacare mess worsening all around them and who simply can't deal with it. (Sort of like that president they admire so much, who doesn't want to hear bad news.) In the coming weeks and months . . . and perhaps years . . . you'll be seeing a lot of "it's not as bad as it looks, I swear!" commentary.

Yesterday I took apart Jamelle Bouie's laughable claim that Obamacare would be in much better shape if not for Republican obstructionism. Now over at New York magazine, Jonathan Chait offers the "you're all overreacting" spin. In fact, we're hyperventilating!

He declares, "More likely, things will round back into normalcy." (What is "normalcy" in the post-Obamacare era?)

He begins, "One of the most important changes in the law is a huge collection of bureaucratic nudges designed to incentivize the health-care system toward delivering higher value rather than churning out higher cost. That experiment, while still extremely early, is going far better at this stage than even the most optimistic advocates hoped."

So think about all that higher value the next time you're reading about an expensive website that doesn't work; unexpected cancellation notices after presidential assurances; sticker shock from high premiums, deductibles, and co-pays under the new plans; a more limited selection of doctors and hospitals under the new plans; confusing, rapidly changing rules for "grandfathering" the old plans; the possibility of the "death spiral" for insurance companies; and of course, identity thieves and cybersecurity worries.

He also asserts…

The website is kind of working already. Lost in the Keep Your Plan imbroglio, it appears that healthcare.gov has already reached a point of functionality. It can currently handle 20–25,000 simultaneous users. That may or may not qualify as a full Hanukkah Miracle fixed website by the end of the month, but it's probably enough, at the very least, to let the law muddle through.

We'll come back to that "enough" threshold in a moment.

As mentioned in yesterday's Jolt, the easiest way to ensure that the site works for "the vast majority" of users is to drastically reduce what you mean by "the vast majority."

White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed Monday that one in five Americans will not be able to sign up for insurance through HealthCare.gov even if the administration meets its Nov. 30 deadline for fixing the online enrollment system.

"I think the way to look at that figure is that of, say, 10 who go on the system, roughly two won't get through the system," Carney said.

Oh, and here's an update on that Hanukkah miracle:

At the moment people can go straight to an insurer to buy coverage that meets the same standards as policies sold on health-insurance exchanges such as HealthCare.gov. But if customers are eligible for subsidies toward the cost of their premiums, they can get those subsidies only by purchasing their coverage on the exchanges, where plans can be compared side by side.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday that the administration is "working to set up direct enrollment through insurance companies so that Americans could choose to enroll directly through the insurance company."

If the administration really thought the site would be working for the "vast majority" of people in two weeks, they wouldn't be setting up the work-around.

Notice when giving progress reports, the administration continues to withhold the figures that might not look so good:

CMS has been sending "try us again" emails to 275,000 users who ran into problems when HealthCare.gov was launched Oct. 1.

It's comforting to hear that 90 percent of these users who gave HealthCare.gov another chance are having success the second time around, at least in creating accounts. But CMS didn't disclose how many of the 275,000 frustrated users actually came back to the site.

We don't know how the November enrollment numbers will look. We know they'll probably be better than October's abysmal 106,000, but that's not saying much. What are the odds they hit 250,000 this month? 500,000? Remember, they're aiming for 7 million during this six month period. They're at 2 percent of their goal, with 25 percent of the enrollment period passed.

There are 134 days until the enrollment deadline. They need more than 51,000 completed purchases per day every day from now until March 31 to reach the 7 million mark, and they're telling us it's a good sign that the site only craps out when traffic hits 25,000 simultaneous users.

Great, Those Dysfunctional Websites Cost a Lot More than We Thought

Hey, remember when I referred to an "expensive website that doesn't work"?

Actually, it was really prohibitively expensive:

The Obama administration gave states roughly $4.4 billion in taxpayer dollars to set up their own ObamaCare websites, according to a new analysis, in the latest revelation about the faucet of federal spending switched on by the 2010 passage of the health care law.

Some of the states even took federal money, then decided to let the federal site handle enrollment.

Oregon received $245 million in state grant money, but its problematic site has yet to enroll customers.

Think about it: You and I could have given them the same results for nothing.

Delaware, with its 97 enrollees, cost federal taxpayers $12.9 million.

Iowa, with 136 enrollees, cost $59.6 million.

The District of Columbia, with 565 enrollees, cost $133 million.

Hawaii, with 257 enrollees, cost $205 million.

"So it was just another Obama slush fund," concludes Ace at Ace of Spades.

Palin Derangement Syndrome; Not Quite as Common, But Still Virulent

Here's the good news:

MARTIN BASHIR: Last Friday, on this broadcast, I made some comments which were deeply offensive and directed at Governor Sarah Palin. I wanted to take this opportunity to say sorry to Mrs. Palin and to also offer an unreserved apology to her friends and family, her supporters, our viewers, and anyone who may have heard what I said. My words were wholly unacceptable. They were neither accurate, nor fair. They were unworthy of anyone who would claim to have an interest in politics. And they have brought shame upon my friends and colleagues at this network, none of whom were responsible for the things that I said, and at a place where we try every day to elevate political discourse and to focus on issues that matter to all of us…

Do you feel like you've heard this sort of story before? It's because you have:

June 2009:

David Letterman is making a full-throated apology for his controversial joke about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter.

During a taping of tonight's edition of his CBS "Late Show," Letterman went much further than his last explanation of the joke, in which he quipped that a baseball player had "knocked up" Palin's daughter.

"I told a bad joke," Letterman said. "I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke."

July 2010:

Levi Johnston is playing nice.

The father of Sarah Palin's grandchild backtracked Tuesday from scores of comments he made about the Palin family over the past two years, offering a public apology for saying "things that were not completely true."

February 2011:

Us Weekly ran a story quoting Sarah Palin demanding that Christina Aguilera be "deported" over her botched performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XLV.

The only problem: It never happened.

The item "quoted" Palin trashing Aguilera as "a demanding beauty queen who's clearly in over her head" and adding for good measure, "If I were president, I'd deport Ms. Augilera back to wherever it is she's from and give Amy Smart a call."

The fake quotes originated from an Onion-like satirical web site, relaying a fictional radio interview between the former Governor of Alaska and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Us Weekly apologized for their mistake Thursday saying, "Oopsies…our bad!"

Sarah Palin is not always my cup of tea, but all of these are examples of borderline unhinged behavior on the part of her critics.

There's something amazing about the overwhelming demonization of her from the fall of 2008; she really was turned into this Emmanuel Goldstein/scapegoat figure to the Left, an all-purpose bogeywoman to be sneered at and metaphorically spat upon every chance they get -- until they realize that they sound like unhinged lunatics.

We reached the point where so many folks who have some of the most prominent perches in the media see her as this inhuman figure, some embodiment of pure evil, who is completely undeserving of any level of respect, or in some cases, even basic fact-checking. Some will chalk it up to sexism, some will chalk it up to hatred of the rural America she seems to represent.

Perhaps the treatment of Palin most clearly represents the contradiction between how liberals see themselves and how they actually behave and think. They like to think of themselves as being tolerant, understanding, intellectual, rational, the "reality-based community." And then when you mention Palin's name, a bunch of 'em snarl, spit, sneer, and their eyes bulge with rage -- all for a woman who's been out of office since 2009 and who shows no sign of returning to it again.

Darn it, Ace says it better than I have:

Leftist politics, I maintain, are not a politics at all, but a psychological response to one's shortcomings and feelings of failure. Leftist politics are, simply put, a way of getting even with a world that's done one wrong -- and most people carrying about such grievances against a world that's done one wrong are psychologically broken.

These fairytale "politics" give them an avenue to vent their rages and turmoils about their failures and inadequacies in a way that is deemed, incorrectly, to be socially acceptable and even high-minded.

If a man were raving on the street in this fashion -- about his hopes that someone would literally [do a bad thing – Jim] in a perceived "enemy's" mouth (a perceived "enemy," who, crucially, he's never actually met) -- most of us would shake our heads in secondary shame. Some of the more empathetic of us would call social services and attempt to have the madman brought in for psychological treatment.

But the left -- Martin Bashir, Chris Matthews, Daily Kos, all of the hateful, raging, vibrating-with-resentment left -- does this sort of thing in the guise of "political commentary" and no one makes the connection between this broken-souled primal screaming and mental unwellness.

That's their cover. They just call their inner rages "politics" and their antisocial behaviors "activism," and then they pretend to be normal, well-adjusted people.

ADDENDUM: Hope to see you Wednesday night.

To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com

Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here.

Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital.

National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives.