ZOMBIE CONTENTIONS

When I was a kid, the barbershop I went to every other week for a haircut had a sign on the wall reading “If You Leave, You Lose Your Turn.” (Some years later, when my brother began practice as a clinical psychologist, I recommended that he hang a sign in his office advising his patients “If You Leave, You Lose Your Mind.”)

This simple sign from long ago came to mind this morning as I was (1) reviewing the latest round of opinions on the health care debate and (2) reflecting on something Stephen Hayes said last night during the panel segment of Special Report with Bret Baier. Let’s take Hayes first.

Hayes noted, correctly I believe, that the town-hall protests this past week had the unintended consequence of helping the Democrats and the administration by enabling them to change the subject from Obamacare with its many fatal flaws to the unseemly conduct of the protests. Co-panelist Charles Krauthammer elaborated on this point by observing that the protesters missed an important opportunity to address these flaws calmly and dismissively in a point-by-point fashion. In short, the protesters — and in a larger sense, Republicans — “lost their turn.”

Luckily, it is not too late for Republicans to change the subject back — to get another turn. Obamacare is still very much on the ropes, primarily because of the “Death Panel” clause (to borrow a well-placed phrase) it contains.

This becomes evident when you examine opinions emanating this morning from the left. Lee Siegel, who identifies himself as “among those . . .  who believe that the absence of universal health care is America’s burning shame,” writes in the Daily Beast that “One of the key bills under consideration in the plan — sympathy for limitations on end-of-life care — is morally revolting.” Siegel later dispassionately dissects Obama’s curious embrace of “a utilitarian initiative straight out of Victorian England” as arising from his University of Chicago Law School days, where one of the leading voices on the faculty, Judge Richard Posner, “is both an enthusiastic advocate of euthanasia and an energetic eugenicist.”

Eugene Robinson, hardly the voice of reason, writes in the Washington Post that among the the “nut jobs and carpetbaggers” protesting at town halls are “confused and concerned Americans who seem genuinely convinced they’re not being told the whole truth about health care reform,” adding “And they have a point.”

Even the New York Times (aka, the White House East) has a piece this morning on the launch of a new administration website (yet another website!) to counter “potentially damaging charges,” noting that the need for such a site acknowledges the reality Obama is “suddenly at risk of losing control of the public debate.”

As to Republicans having lost their turn — and their rational voice — initially, the Democrats are now doing their level best to lose theirs. First, there was the “punch back twice as hard” remark emanating from the White House, which seems to have been construed literally at a town-hall protest in St. Louis last week. Added to this were provocative comments by Obama himself, who unwisely said at a rally for Creigh Deeds, Virginia’s Democratic nominee for governor,

I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleanin’ up after them, but don’t do a lot of talkin’. [Video here.]

The Democrat counter-initiative (dubbed “Operation Shoot Self in Foot”), continued yesterday with the tag team of Hoyer and Pelosi calling the protesters “un-American” in a USA Today article, thereby having forgotten their credo from a year ago that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

We have a long way to go, of course, before the dust settles on the health care debate, but right now this is shaping up to be one long, hot August for the Democrats. Republicans meantime would be well-served to heed a piece of timely advice: When your enemy is committing suicide, get out of his way.