Though Democrats may be tempted to dismiss last night’s result in Missouri, history has proven that they’ve ignored public opposition to national health care legislation at their own peril.

Missouri Says “No” to ObamaCare: …by an overwhelming 71 percent to 29 percent margin, voters in the bellwether state approved the resulting initiative known as Proposition C, which is aimed at protecting Missouri residents from the mandate that will force individuals to purchase health insurance policies approved by the government, or pay a penalty. From The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog by Philip Klein.

Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea — which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical — it does not work — but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. So I’m going to leave it to other speakers to concentrate on the practical flaws in the Clinton health plan. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan — not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it — to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.

Haircuts are free, like the air we breathe, so some people show up every day for an expensive new styling, the government pays out more and more, barbers revel in their huge new incomes, and the profession starts to grow ravenously, bald men start to come in droves for free hair implantations, a school of fancy, specialized eyebrow pluckers develops — it’s all free, the government pays. The dishonest barbers are having a field day, of course — but so are the honest ones; they are working and spending like mad, trying to give every customer his heart’s desire, which is a millionaire’s worth of special hair care and services — the government starts to scream, the budget is out of control. Suddenly directives erupt: we must limit the number of barbers, we must limit the time spent on haircuts, we must limit the permissible type of hair styles; bureaucrats begin to split hairs about how many hairs a barber should be allowed to split. A new computerized office of records filled with inspectors and red tape shoots up; some barbers, it seems, are still getting too rich, they must be getting more than their fair share of the national hair, so barbers have to start applying for Certificates of Need in order to buy razors, while peer review boards are established to assess every stylist’s work, both the dishonest and the overly honest alike, to make sure that no one is too bad or too good or too busy or too unbusy. Etc. In the end, there are lines of wretched customers waiting for their chance to be routinely scalped by bored, hog-tied haircutters some of whom remember dreamily the old days when somehow everything was so much better. Do you think the situation would be improved by having hair-care cooperatives organized by the government? — having them engage in managed competition, managed by the government, in order to buy haircut insurance from companies controlled by the government? If this is what would happen under government-managed hair care, what else can possibly happen — it is already starting to happen — under the idea of health care as a right? Health care in the modern world is a complex, scientific, technological service. How can anybody be born with a right to such a thing?

In a key scene in Frank Capra’s 1939 film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” appointed senator (and unwitting pawn in a corruption scheme) Jefferson Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart, suggests to a colleague that perhaps it would be a good idea to read bills before voting on them. “The bills?” responds an incredulous Senator Paine, played by Claude Rains. “These bills are put together by legal minds after long study. I can’t understand half of them myself, and I used to be a lawyer.” Forget it, he tells Smith. “When the time comes, I’ll advise you how to vote.” Never has art so closely mirrored life as with the mammoth 2,100-page health care bill passed by the Senate. “The result makes no sense whatsoever — not to conservatives, not to liberals, not to anyone,” accurately concludes the Weekly Standard. “Rather than reform a system that everyone agrees is a failure, it will subsidize that system and compel participation in it.” Many who have long touted health care reform are turning up their noses at the final product. Michael Bloomberg, New York’s independent mayor, told “Meet the Press” over the weekend: “I have asked congressperson after congressperson. Not one can explain to me what’s in the bill, even in the House version. Certainly not in the other version. And so for them to vote on a bill that they don’t understand whatsoever, really, you’ve got to question how — what kind of government we have.”

I have been a law-abiding citizen all my life. I’ve always played by the rules. That is about to change. The early morning passage today of the Senate health care bill requires every American to purchase health insurance. I refuse. I will not abide by this bill if it is passed into law. And if the government levies a fine, I will not pay it. I’ve had enough. There comes a time when a line in the sand must be drawn. I’ve just drawn mine. I’ve listened to the outright lies our politicians have spouted in order to pass this legislation, which, by the way, has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with government control.

After the Democrats cleared the second of three 60 vote hurdles last night, Republicans ceded enough debate time back to the majority so that passage of Obamacare through the Senate will take place n Christmas Eve at 8 AM. Conservatives have every right to be disappointed that Senate Republicans did not force the maximum amount of debate possible. But they can take heart in a key point of order that will be voted on later today. Sponsored by Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV), that vote will lay the groundwork for the possible legal dismantling of Obama’s health program. As we’ve detailed before, the very core of the Senate health plan includes an unprecedented expansion of the power of the federal government over the lives of every American. For the first time in history, every American would be forced to buy federally regulated and approved health insurance or face a $750 fine. As the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) wrote in 1994: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.” The individual mandate and other questionable measures in the bill raise serious questions as to whether Obamacare could survive a Constitutional test:

• Enumerated Powers
• 5th Amendment
• Racial Discrimination
• Unequal State Treatment

The 150,000 member National Nurses United organization yesterday called the Senate plan, “a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the health care crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry.” With unemployment in the construction sector already at 19.4%, the construction industry was surprised to learn a job killing employment tax especially targeting them made it into the Senate’s final version of Obamacare. Across all sectors of the economy, businesses worry that a series of new taxes and fees to pay for expanding health-care coverage will push up premiums, particularly for smaller employers. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) says three other senators have told him they want to bargain for the same Medicaid bailout deal Nelson secured for Nebraska. In an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post, President Obama named the Wall Street bailout as the ‘most important thing’ of his first year.