What If?

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose Mitt Romney had won the 2012 election and was now POTUS. Further suppose that President Romney has been unable to pass a bill through Harry Reid's Senate repealing the Affordable Care Act. Frustrated, and in an effort to protect the US population from the effects of the law as it grinds inexorably into effect, Romney issues a series of orders effectively delaying the implementation of the act. Romney begins by delaying the individual mandate, orders insurance companies to continue offering expired policies in defiance of the law, and eventually delays the employer mandate as well.

What might Democrats and the Press (but I repeat myself) be saying? Charles C.W. Cooke thinks he can imagine.

"This is an utter disgrace," griped Senator Chuck Schumer (D, N.Y). "This law was passed through Congress, signed by the previous president, and upheld by the Supreme Court." [ . . . ]

Others went further. "It's. The. Law," animated Democratic spokesman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz told reporters at a hastily assembled press conference in Miami, barking out each monosyllable and pounding her fist on her desk. "The terrorist, anarchist, hostage-taking neo-confederates in the Republican Party tried for years to delay this in the legislature and now, simply because they have a Senate they dislike, they are trying to do so with the executive branch. It's a disgrace to the memory of our Founding Persons and it will not stand."

Read the whole thing. As they say.

Kevin Williamson, noting an approving nod to the French Revolution on a New York billboard, reminds us of the true agenda of the left.

The Left gets good PR, but it is not really about the minimum wage or Head Start or bigger school budgets. Its agenda is control and domination, and it has been known to endorse and use political violence to achieve those ends. When part of the Left's corporate arm is happily contemplating the Terror, we should take note, and perhaps ask our progressive friends under which other circumstances execution without trial seems to them an admirable course of action.

Daniel Greenfield points out that this should be heady times for leftists:

The American left has never had it this good with two terms of an uncompromising leftist in the White House dedicated to its agenda, making and unmaking laws at a whim, siccing the IRS and federal prosecutors on his political enemies and transforming the country at a breathtaking pace.

Obama is what generations of the left have worked toward. This is the flicker of hope they kept alive throughout the Nixon years, Carter's collapse and the long stretch of Reaganomics. This is what Bill Clinton robbed them of by gauging his actions against the polls instead of blasting full steam ahead regardless of what the public wanted.

Greenfield goes on to note that those on the left, spurred by an ideology based upon opposition, continues the negativity, attacks, and hate despite the salad days of an Obama administration:

Hating the right is the only thing that keeps the left together. When it doesn't have Nixon to kick around anymore, it dissolves into a wet puddle of goo. If it didn't have Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney and every other figure who took his turn starring in their grim theater of the Two Minutes Hate, it would revert back to the petty infighting of a thousand minor eccentric causes.

The left needs to believe in a vast right-wing conspiracy. It needs the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Evangelical Christians, AIPAC, oil companies, defense contractors and every other element of its conspiracy theories to keep its followers focused on the "real" threat instead of purging each other for tone policing, insufficient privilege checking and any other outrage of the week.

As long as we are speaking of hatred and negativity, how about this story of some good old-fashion Jew hating at UT-Knoxville:

Reports about vandalism of campus Jewish facilities, harassment of Jewish professors and students and even physical attacks by members of SJP have been reported at some schools.

If this is what SJP is reported to do, is this what UT-Knoxville can expect?

The article goes on to quote Khalad Abu Toameh, who intervied students and professors at several university campuses:

The so-called pro-Palestinian "junta" on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimization of Israel. If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Their hatred for Israel and what it stands for has blinded them to a point where they no longer care about the real interests of the Palestinians, namely the need to end the anarchy and lawlessness, and to dismantle all the armed gangs that are responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians over the past few years..

What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the "occupation" as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel...

Everything the left does and advocates, from environmentalism to abortion to tax and energy policy, is driven by the very same hate engine. To the left, pro-lifers aren't just wrong, they are waging a war on women, rich people aren't just rich, they are thieving bastards who must be brought down, oil companies aren't provided gasoline for people to put in their cars, they are trying to destroy the earth itself. It's such a tiring, never-ending tirade but it seems to be all they have.

Kevin Williamson takes a shot at the contradictions inherent in feminism:

A useful definition is this: "Feminism is the words 'I Want!' in the mouths of three or more women, provided they're the right kind of women." Feminism must therefore accommodate wildly incompatible propositions - e.g., (1) Women unquestionably belong alongside men in Marine units fighting pitched battles in Tora Bora but (2) really should not be expected to be able to perform three chin-ups. Or: (1) Women at Columbia are empowered by pornography but (2) women at Wellesley are victimized by a statue of a man sleepwalking in his Shenanigans. And then there is Fluke's Law: (1) Women are responsible moral agents with full sexual and economic autonomy who (2) must be given an allowance, like children, when it comes to contraceptives.

This sort of thing turns my stomach. Trader Joe's wants to open a store in a depressed neighborhood, and the residents are thrilled. Then the do-gooder left wing activists show up and spoil the party.

After a few months of racially tinged accusations and angry demands, Trader Joe's decided it wasn't worth the hassle. "We run neighborhood stores and our approach is simple," a corporate statement said. "If a neighborhood does not want a Trader Joe's, we understand, and we won't open the store in question."

Hours after Trader Joe's pulled out, PAALF leaders arrived at a previously scheduled press conference trying to process what just happened. The group re-issued demands that the now-cancelled development include affordable housing, mandated jobs based on race, and a small-business slush fund. Instead, the only demand being met is two fallow acres and a lot of anger from the people who actually live nearby.

Mona Charan describes the effects of fatherlessness on boys:

The link between family composition and child welfare is well established. What "Wayward Sons" adds is data on the differentially harmful effects of fatherlessness on sons versus daughters. "Growing up in a single-parent home appears to significantly decrease the probability of college attendance for boys, yet has no similar effect for girls." Boys from such homes "are 25 percentage points more likely to be suspended in the eighth grade than girls from these households, whereas the corresponding gender gap between boys and girls from households with two biological parents was only 10 percentage points."

Victor Davis Hanson examines the consequences of a feckless American foreign policy:

(T)he Europeans are increasingly bewildered if not a little anxious. They cannot reduce Obama, a man of the Left, to a caricatured Texan who often misunderstands the world, because Obama is an Ivy Leaguer who has never yet understood it.

They cannot whine about American ubiquity, because Obama agrees with their rhetoric that the U.S. should recede from the world stage. They cannot out-left America, because Obama is to the left of almost all the European leaders. And they cannot offer any more sermons about being patient with the world's aggressors, because Obama is not so much patient as uninterested. Without an engaged U.S., Bashar Assad, Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communists, Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych, the unhinged North Koreans, and radical Islamists could not care less about what the E.U. thinks or about the consequences of its much-hyped soft power. In sum, Europe cannot play Athens when there is no longer a Rome to back it up.