CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl appeared on Monday's Morning Joe on MSNBC and surprisingly claimed that the victorious nationalization of health care made her think of Barack Obama as more....Reaganesque. He's not Jimmy Carter any more, he's Reagan:
You brought up Ronald Reagan, and I do see a lot of similarities with this president. In the polling, you see that some of his issues aren't so popular, but he remains fundamentally inspirational. People think that he's doing an honest job, those kinds of fundamentals. And one final thing is luck. Here's how the president was lucky on this one. That insurance company, the few that raised those rates. I think health care was really dead, until those rates started to skyrocket above 30 percent. And that energized the president, the White House, the Democrats, and brought this thing back to life. So luck is another thing.
This was apparently Stahl's fifth point of the morning, because Joe Scarborough replied: "I think your fifth point is great as well!"
Just before that, Pat Buchanan asked Rep. Jim Clyburn if the forthcoming "immigration reform" would insure that the government would pay for health care for illegal aliens. Clyburn claimed we already do in the emergency rooms, and yet he recyled the Democrat talking point that the "reform" will save $1.2 trillion in the second decade.
When Scarborough asked Clyburn how it was important to have a "cushion" in the House vote, Clyburn compared it to the civil-rights fight of the Sixties, and just like Harry Reid, compared current health-reform opponents to Strom Thurmond filibustering civil rights.
