, published in 2009, you already know how Palin took on the "Corrupt Bastards Club" in Alaska. In Palin's op-ed, which was published over at
yesterday, it's clear that she sees in Washington, D.C. exactly what she was seeing and fighting in her own state not so many years ago.
The Corrupt Bastards Club. They said it. I didn’t.
In Alaska we had a
group of politicos who chuckled as they dubbed themselves the “CBC,”
which stands for “Corrupt Bastards Club.” But it was no laughing matter.
I, and many others, took them on. We won. When I served as chairman of
our state’s Oil and Gas Commission, I reported on the cronyism of the
chair of my own Party, who had been appointed by our governor to that
same energy regulating commission. (Click here to
see a reporter’s reaction to a short Newt Gingrich interview on the
matter.) The whistle blowing resulted in him receiving the largest
ethics fine in the state’s history. But that was just the tip of the
oily iceberg. The FBI investigated Alaskan lawmakers for taking bribes
from the oil industry in exchange for votes favorable to that industry,
and politicos ended up in jail.* The lawmakers actually called
themselves the Corrupt Bastards Club and even emblazoned the CBC
initials on baseball caps they gifted each other – that’s how
untouchable they believed they were. But average, concerned citizens
said, “enough is enough,” and shook things up. Though some of the CBC
members ended up in horizontal pinstripes, much of the compromised party
apparatus stayed in power.
I’ll never forget standing at the podium during our state GOP
convention and asking delegates to stand up with me and oust the status
quo because the political environment had to change for Alaska to
progress toward her manifest destiny as a more productive—and
ethical—state to help secure our union. Only about half stood up. The
rest looked around gauging the political winds and sat on their thumbs.
Our federal delegation was incensed at me. Their influence resulted in
much of the party machine staying put, but I’ll never be sorry I fought
it.
Today, doesn't it seem like we have a Corrupt Bastards Club in D.C.?
On steroids? It might not be as oily and obvious as its Alaska
counterpart, but it’s just as compromised because its members, too, are
indifferent to what their actions mean for We the People.
I’m prepared to be attacked for suggesting this comparison of the
D.C. political establishment with the CBC. But I call it like I see it.
And lived it. The fight over defunding socialized healthcare, aka
Obamacare, should have opened everyone’s eyes to call it the same.
From the very start, we knew that any health care reform could move
us in one of two directions: closer to a genuine free market and
patient-centered system to allow choices, affordability, and continued
economic freedom, or closer to full socialized healthcare in the form of
a single-payer system. President Obama and many Democrats have always
openly admitted they want socialized medicine in the form of a
single-payer system.
It can be argued that Obamacare isn’t full socialized medicine… yet.
Right now it is a sort of corporatism, which is the collusion of big
government with big business. With Obamacare, the government has taken
over an industry that comprises a sixth of our economy, radically
changed the way it operates, and is mandating that we purchase the
services of that industry. This is unprecedented. It’s radical.
For those Obama voters who are now flummoxed by the rise in their
health care premiums, let me explain why they went up. Obamacare has
changed the very nature of insurance, which is a hedge against a future
possibility. A 27-year-old marathon runner is much less likely to suffer
a major illness than a 57-year-old obese chain smoker with a pickled
liver. But Obamacare has ruled that there be no adjusted costs for
pre-existing conditions, which means we threw out the actuarial data
and everyone is now required to pay more to cover those who are more
likely to be sick. But now average Americans – especially those healthy
20somethings who probably don’t even want to buy insurance – can’t
afford to pay for Obamacare.
Obamacare in its current corporatist form isn’t meant to last. It’s
meant to push us towards full socialized medicine with a single-payer
system. How do I know this? Simple. Let’s compare Obamacare with the
Canadian single-payer system.
With Obamacare we have crappier health care (fewer choices, fewer
doctors, and an IPAB rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats, aka the
ol' “death panel” that has been admitted to existing in Obamacare), but
it is very expensive for the individual American. For instance, you’ll
find that the so-called Bronze Plans are just as expensive as the
Platinum Plans when you factor in the $5,000-$10,000 deductible in
addition to the monthly payments you’ll shell out. And those Americans
who aren’t being pushed onto the Obamacare exchanges are still seeing
their insurance premiums skyrocket as the industry shifts onto consumers
the cost of not factoring in various conditions.
Now let’s look at what Canadians have. I dare say our good neighbor
to your north, and my east, has even worse health care coverage, but at
least it’s “free” for the individual.
Americans, if you’re faced with a 300% increase (or even a 65%
increase like my family) in your health care premiums for crappier
coverage, doesn’t “free” socialized medicine all of a sudden sound
appealing?
And that’s how Americans will be led down the primrose path to a
single-payer system. People will be frustrated, worn out, and broke
under this new government burden. Many will end up concluding they’ll
settle for – then demand – full socialized medicine because they’ll see
how the unworkable Obamacare will break our health care system (where,
presently, no one is turned away from emergency rooms and we have many
public and private safety nets for people in need), along with busting
our personal bank accounts. The cry will go out, “Can’t you just put us
all in a sort of Medicaid-like system? It’ll be much less confusing than
these awful exchange websites and a lot less expensive!” As things
stand, many who are getting slammed by Obamacare will inevitably settle
for less out of necessity. And that’s the left’s declared plan: a
single-payer system. They said it. I didn't.
Of course, the Canadian system isn’t really “free." It comes with
high taxes and even more rationing, which is precisely why the
Obama-friendly economist Paul Krugman makes a point of reminding us that
we’ll only bring health care costs “under control” by employing “death
panels and sales taxes.” And, of course, our already broke country will
go bankrupt even faster under the unsustainable strain of this expanding
welfare state, and our economy will suffer under the stagnation of
permanently higher taxes.
When Harry Reid laughs and says, “Yes, yes! Absolutely, yes!” when
asked if his goal was to move Obamacare to a single-payer system of full
socialized medicine, he’s spilling the truth. The evidence is right
before our eyes. Please open yours, GOP establishment.
The broken websites and botched Obamacare rollout help push things to
that inevitable conclusion by causing frustration and confusion that
only the government can “fix.” In fact, these unusable Obamacare
websites make a reasonable person wonder how this administration could
have made such a colossal bungle of the rollout when they are, after
all, the same savvy experts who had the most sophisticated and precise
campaign websites ever built. They could pinpoint voters down to a city
block, but they messed up a website that cost the government over $200
million more than it cost Apple to develop the first iPhone. Purposeful?
The full implementation of Obamacare puts us firmly on the path to
the left’s desire of a single-payer system of socialized medicine. That
was the end game for Obama and the Democrats all along. The end is now
in sight for them, and the media doesn’t even ask about it.
So what was the GOP establishment’s game plan to fight this march
towards socialism? They’ve been busy denouncing Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike
Lee and their supporters, along with the good House Members who fought
for our one chance to defund Obamacare. But what were the wayward
Republicans’ alternative plans? They thought we could ignore the
implementation of Obamacare and simply focus on some future electoral
victories in the hope that some day the stars will align and we’ll have
super majorities in the House and Senate along with a Republican
president who would hopefully repeal this disastrous soon-to-be set in
stone new “entitlement.”
There’s a big problem with that scenario. It overlooks the everyday
reality before our eyes. As Obamacare is being implemented, Americans
can’t afford to pay for it. We can’t even sign up for it on the
impossibly cumbersome websites, but the IRS will fine us for not doing
so anyway! Obama gave his pals, and Congress gave themselves, tickets
off this train wreck via waivers. Cruz and Lee fought for us to get the
same relief the big guys got. The media and disloyal politicians turned
on them and, divided, we lost. Now we little guys are stuck on this
train, which will soon collide with hardship and real-world economics
that don’t pencil out. Friends, by the time the electoral stars align
for this hoped-for GOP hat trick the country will be out billions, if
not trillions, more of our tax dollars and will have already begged D.C.
to relieve us of this corporatist nightmare even if it means a
socialized single-payer system. And once there, do you think we’ll ever
go back and strip this “entitlement”? Unarguable history proves
otherwise.
The only credible plan of action was to do everything in our power to
delay the implementation of Obamacare – defund it, postpone it,
whatever – while at the same time work to elect a majority to repeal it.
That is what Cruz and Lee and those Tea Party aligned House Members
were doing. There was no other credible alternative plan to seize the
constitutionally appropriate opportunity to legislatively close the
purse strings to stop the juggernaut of full socialized medicine.
You have to wonder whether the permanent political class in D.C.
really wants to get rid of Obamacare at all. We’re finding out it’s good
business for them.
The same lobbyists who wrote Obamacare are now busy selling their
wares to anyone with enough dough who wants to get around the law.
Meanwhile politicians are busy collecting campaign donations and other
favors while carving out the lobbyists’ requested exemptions for various
cronies. Then every election cycle they get to capitalize on
fundraising off Obamacare shenanigans while telling voters back home
about how hard they’re fighting to stop it. Don’t be fooled. Too many of
them merely took meaningless symbolic votes that could never have
repealed this, and they sat on their thumbs without standing united in
the fight for us.
GOP politicians claim they’re against Obamacare and promise to repeal
it. But when it came time to stand up and use the Constitutional tools
they have – the power of the purse strings – to finally halt the
implementation, they balked, waved the white flag, and joined the lapdog
media in trashing the good guys who fought for us.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, these same politicians are covertly
pushing through amnesty despite evidence that the 33 million newly
legalized voters will overwhelmingly lean Democrat! Obviously this makes
the likelihood of a GOP hat trick electoral victory, and hence the
repeal of socialized healthcare, even more improbable.
The media wants you to believe that the partial government shutdown
“fractured” the Republican machine from grassroots commonsense
conservatives who go by the acronym TEA Party (that stands for “Taxed
Enough Already”). No, Tea Party patriots rose up because the Republican
machine “fractured” itself years ago by marginalizing its conservative
base. The recent “slimdown” didn’t cause the fracture. It happened
because of the fracture – because wayward Republicans have refused for
years to stand up and fight for economic freedom and limited government,
despite campaigning on those principles every election cycle. That’s
how we got into this debt-ridden mess in the first place. They
campaigned one way, but governed another.
It’s the establishment’s choice whether this fracture remains unfixed
because the conservative grassroots will never give up the fight for
freedom. Never. Never. Generations of our sons and daughters sent off to
war to protect our freedom have paid too high a price for us to ever
give up the fight.
The conservative grassroots is rising up just like some did all those
years ago at the GOP convention in Alaska. We’re rising up and calling
on the rest of the Party to stand up with us against corruption and
indifference – the twin causes of failure. Stand up, America! A great
awakening is needed now more than ever. And it can happen in this most
exceptional nation. By the grace of God it will happen!
President Reagan warned about socialized medicine, and ironically I
quoted his warning in my closing remarks during the 2008 Vice
Presidential debate: “If you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of
these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our
children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America
when men were free.”
You deserve the best, America. And the best is God-given freedom.
