by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner
No one knows what the effect of the presently unpopular shutdown will be 13 months from now on the eve of the 2014 elections, but it may be far less than the consequence of the Obamacare rollout. The problem with the website is critical—how can the supposedly most proficient web-based administration in history not build a workable website?—but pales in comparison with rising premiums, rising deductibles, a vast tax on the strapped younger generation, and a labyrinth of regulations that even the authors of the legislation are not acquainted with. The president serially blames either Bush for his present woes, or, more recently, the House Republicans, but Obamacare was his own creation, and it is doing more harm to the economy and job creation than any short-term downside from the brief shutdown.
In that context, as the media can no longer focus on the Republican “arsonists,” “nihilists,” and “Taliban,” and is forced to cover the disaster of Obamacare, the mystery over the next year will be whether the Republicans who are now blamed for shutting down parts of the government will be admired for at least trying to do something about what proved to be an incoherent and destructive program.
