It's the Liberty Stupid

"I'm more optimistic than I was a week ago," Stupak told The Associated Press between meetings with constituents in his northern Michigan district, including a crowded town hall gathering where opinions on health care and the abortion issue were plentiful and varied.

"The president says he doesn't want to expand or restrict current law (on abortion). Neither do I," Stupak said. "That's never been our position. So is there some language that we can agree on that hits both points -- we don't restrict, we don't expand abortion rights? I think we can get there." - FoxNews.com (of course)

Repeatedly during Obama's push for nationalized health-care the GOP has made a very public last stand on abortions being covered.  I am sure this is welcome news for Obama since it gives him the perfect bone to throw to (or maybe at) the GOP. 

The scenario goes something like this:

Obama designs a national health-care plan that includes abortion on demand, along with thousands of pages of other power grabs for the federal government.  As various conservative groups sift through the bill they look for hot issues to illuminate.  Once they locate the part about abortion they immediately pass this information on to the GOP legislators (who likely haven't read the bill) demanding they stand up for life.  Fearing a backlash in the next election, the GOP legislators grandstand on the "abortion issue".  This is music to the ears of Obama since he can push the legislators to make a concession to prove he is non-partisan and the GOP has a voice (what a wonderful guy).  The liberal legislators grumble a bit and eventually make the concession (as planned from the beginning) prompting Pro-Life groups to shout "Victory!!"  Obama moves to "Get this deal done" and if any GOP legislator objects to any other elements in the bill it proves that the GOP are really just a bunch of obstructionists.  The bill goes through after much arm-twisting, mud-slinging, and spin.  A year later this issue of abortion not being covered is attached to a bill to provide funds to better equip our soldiers in Afghanistan and Obama has his victory.

How many times have you heard that the Democrats plan on passing the bill via reconciliation and then amending the bill later to "fine tune it"?  When was the last time you heard the federal government say, "This nation program isn't working out so we are going to phase it out"?  Obama is employing an incremental strategy to get national health-care established in some form (which will never go away no matter how bad it is) and grow it.

Making the nationalized health-care debate about abortion, or any other issue besides liberty, is just wrong.  The root issue of national health-care is that it is completely out of scope for the responsibilities of the federal government.  As Rep. mike Pence (R - IN) recently said, saying no to bad legislation is underrated in D.C.