The pathetic attempt to pin the blame for Obamacare on Republicans

Larry Summers published a truly pathetic piece in WaPo today, taking Republicans to task for trying to “subvert” Obamacare:

[F]airness requires recognizing the equally important, and in some ways more fundamental, factor behind the problems implementing Obamacare: the systematic effort of the president’s opponents to delegitimize and undermine the project. … There is a line that must be respected between political opposition and conscious subversion. Everyone understands that when the country is at war, even a war a person may oppose, vigorous oversight is essential, but, in the end, there is an obligation to support American troops. In the same way, history will not judge kindly those who, having lost political debates over policy, go beyond vigorous oversight and seek to subvert enacted programs.

Sanctimonious Harvard president bloviation! You can always tell when a Democrat is about to try to pull the wool over your eyes or pick your pocket, because he begins his peroration with "Fairness requires ..."

Healthcare.gov is an ongoing disaster. The President's repeated assurances that Americans would be able to keep their insurance plans and doctors if they liked them have been exposed as premeditated fraud. It is inconvenient facts like these, Mr Summers, that have delegitimized and undermined Obamacare, not the opposition of a few Republicans.

More to the point: Why should anyone be surprised by the continued attempts of Republicans to derail the implementation of Obamacare? Not a single Republican Congressman or Senator voted for Obamacare. Why does Mr Summers think that their opposition should stop with the passage of the law? Of course Republicans will do everything in their power to subvert Obamacare. They should unashamedly shout their ongoing opposition to Obamacare from the rooftops!

The Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. Deep-rooted opposition is the inevitable result of the fact that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid rode roughshod over Republicans and rammed the legislation through without bipartisan support. It is the height of hypocrisy for Mr Summers to bemoan the lack of bipartisan support now when there was no mention of the need for bipartisanship in 2010.

And, as for all of his talk about supporting American troops in time of war, Mr Summers conveniently forgets that Democrats in the Senate, including Hillary Clinton, threatened in 2007 to withhold funding for the war in Iraq if President Bush did not agree to a timetable for withdrawal. As WaPo reported at that time:

Within hours, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared that Bush will not get more money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year unless he accepts a plan to complete troop withdrawals by the end of next year.

Finally, as for the question of whether Republicans will be judged kindly for their continued efforts to subvert Obamacare, the midterm elections in 2014 will go a long way towards answering that question. And right now things are looking increasingly rosy for the Republicans and increasingly bleak for the Democrats (with the spread between those disapproving and approving of President Obama's performance having ballooned to over 10%).

Mr Summers: Democrats, not Republicans, passed Obamacare. You own it. Your attempt to pin the blame for Obamacare's failures on Republicans is truly pathetic.