This report sure suggests as much, Obama to intensify defense of health care reforms:
The White House is preparing a campaign to publicly defend President Obama’s health care reforms just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court weighs arguments on its constitutionality — a case that could redefine the scope of the 2012 election and mobilize voters on both sides.
Now, to be sure, this campaign is related to the coming arguments before the Supreme Court (shouldn’t they then be trying to sharpen their legal arguments rather than appeal to the public?), but said campaign will once again put the unpopular initiative into the spotlight.
Last time, Obamacare came to the forefront of our national discourse, Republicans won big in congressional elections:
It’s not easy to lose 63 seats in a House election. Before 2010, the last time it had been done was when Joe DiMaggio was still patrolling center field for the New York Yankees. It’s even harder to pull off such a feat when exit polling shows that Americans were inclined to blame the prior president (a member of the other party) for the poor economy. This raises a question that Democrats and the media have been avoiding for the past 16 months: Just how did the Democrats do it?
A new academic study says the answer can likely be reduced to one word: Obamacare. The study, which was conducted by scholars from Dartmouth and elsewhere, finds that “supporters of health care reform paid a significant price.”
The way the administration is acting, Democrats may well pay an even higher price this fall.
UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin has more — and offers a perspective slightly different from the article excerpted above.
A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle believe our government should provide tax-payer paid-for health care. For 47% of Americans of voting age, that equals “FREE.”
Obama’s just reminding him who their Daddy is.