In the 1990s, conservatives developed a great line on judges and judicial nominations. It went something like “we want judges who do not bring personal biases to the court, who interpret the law, not make it. Who don’t legislate from the bench.”
It worked. Americans liked it, it appealed to their concerns about years of activist rulings by the courts.
So what did the Democrats do? They copied our language. In the last few years, even recently with the nomination of Justice Sotomayor, we’re hearing the same thing from the Democrats. That their judicial appointees aren’t activists, that they will interpret the law rather than making it.
In their case, of course, this isn’t the truth. The definition of liberal jurisprudence in recent years has been legislating from the bench. But that hasn’t stopped Democrats from using our language to win support for their judicial nominees.
Now we’ve discussed on this blog at various points that when asked about health care reform, most people say they are actually happy with the care they receive, they just want to see costs lowered.
This, of course, is not what the Democratic health care reform plans do. They expand coverage rather than reduce costs. Costs will continue to go up, and in fact will most likely go up faster if the government gets more involved.
I think PJ O’Rourke put it best when he said “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
So I found this little tidbit at the bottom of a Roll Call article today on the 2010 Senate races quite interesting:
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee did not respond directly to Cornyn’s criticism of their recruitment strategy but instead blasted Senate Republicans for blocking Obama’s and Congressional Democrats’ legislation.
“The Republican strategy of stopping every effort to fix the economy, and stopping every effort to lower health care costs, shows that not only have they not learned any lessons from the past elections but also that they may be a bit presumptuous to start singing happy days are here again,” said DSCC spokesman Eric Schultz.
So now Republicans are “stopping every effort to lower health care costs?” Notice the change in language from a few months ago, when all the talk was about expanding coverage. The folks over at the DSCC must have gotten the memo that what they’re trying to do is unpopular. So now, they’ve just stolen our language and are using it to push a plan that will in no way accomplish the goal of lowering health care costs.
