For the first time in years, the message of free enterprise is penetrating the veil of the American electorate.
The Obama administration has done all it can do to promote Obamacare to the American public, but it isn't buying it. The establishment GOP has done its usual whining and blaming, but somehow it is winning. Why?
Every conservative outlet will try to take credit, and some of the credit does rightfully go to these outlets that have been refining the message for years now.
But conservative outlets have been refining the message for years now. The problem traditionally has been that, however strong the message, it usually doesn't resonate with an American public, which likes entertainment news better than hard news and would rather think about sports teams than partisan politics.
This time it is resonating. The public has turned against Obamacare. In a recent CBS poll, 54 percent of Americans don't like Obamacare, and 39 percent want it repealed. Only 3 percent of federal workers even want to partake in Obamacare. That isn't winning.
This reality makes as little sense to me as the premise that a program that "covers more people" and "is better than the current system" will magically cost less. But folks who like small government, free enterprise and liberty better take a close look at what we did right so we can learn from it, because, frankly, we aren't used to winning.
We should be winning. We are a good, solid 50 percent plus of society and we are smarter, per capita, than those who are willing to be controlled by a tyrannical overreach of a bureaucracy who deems them "useful idiots," but we don't sync our message enough – except this time.
The original "Affordable Healthcare Act" was 2,000 pages that no one read until it passed. It has delivered $6.2 trillion in new debt, 20 new taxes and 20,000 new pages of HHS rules, such as mandatory breastfeeding counseling and mammograms that single 20-year-old men will have to pay for, and they know that. Health-care costs are multiplying while jobs are disappearing because companies with more than 50 employees are mandated to cover them so businesses simply aren't expanding. Since part-time employees are exempt, companies are cutting hours and this is costing the middle class. All of this was long expected by free-market types. The amazing part is that the public is catching on now, too.
Seniors are upset because Obamacare threatens Medicare, and according to Heritage, their out-of-pocket costs will explode.
Unions are upset because the 40-hour work week is becoming a thing of the past since Obamacare fines those who have more than 50 full-time employees who don't comply. So far, about 50 percent of businesses plan to cut their full-time workers down to part time, and about 40 percent will simply freeze hiring to comply according to a chamber of commerce study.
Families are upset because they were looking forward to all the money they were supposed to save.
The president said that the average American family can expect a $2,500 savings from Obamacare, but the WSJ said families can actually expect double or triple costs in addition to less jobs and more taxes.
But none of that matters much to the survival of Obamacare. Young, healthy people matter. Â They matter because if they don't opt in and pay, the program will collapse. Physics and economics dictate that without those young, healthy people in the program, the older, sicker people will sink the ship.
That is why the Obama administration has enlisted Hollywood, schoolchildren and others to help them sell the precarious program. California schools are receiving grant money to train students how to teach their parents to enroll in Obamacare.
The administration itself has spent $800 million to promote Obamacare, but simple ads like this one have instead gone viral.
Celebrities are meeting with the president to find ways to sell Obamacare to the public and leftist sites have been making videos to promote Obamacare for years now. Their main tactic seems to be to mock those who have a problem with the government takeover of our health-care system like this one:
But young people weren't too moved. Most still don't understand Obamacare, and those who do are skeptical. Instead, videos like this are resonating.
Twenty-year-old men who used to be able to find full-time work and pay for a medical savings acct can't now because high deductible plans are banned in Obamacare. So that young guy starting out has to pay for that family of four's mandated "breastfeeding counseling" and that 40-something woman's mammogram, despite the fact he fits in none of those risk pools and probably can't find a job.
Now the popularity of Obamacare is losing real steam, and the messengers are in a tailspin.
So they have resorted to literally bribing groups like Catholics and Native-American populations to sell it to their people with millions of dollars in new grant money.
Time will tell if the seemingly bottomless bank account of Uncle Sam will be enough to turn the tide for the greatest takeover ever of the American economy.
Until we know, instead of leaping to take credit for the latest viral ad campaign, I would say that the GOP needs to pause and realize that without constitutional conservatives' contributions over the last five years, they would not be winning this battle of ideas, and they won't win in 2014 or 2016 if they don't begin giving credit where credit is due. The 21st century constitutional conservative seems to better understand history and economics, and they understand how to deliver a message. They will be the ones who reclaim America. Let that one sink in, GOP.