It can be argued that no conservative pundit has more egg on his face now that HCR has passed than our old friend William "The Bloody" Kristol. After all, it was Kristol who provided the battle strategy for the GOP on HCR with his 1993 meme of "Block Everything."
Kristol's precious Weekly Standard has crowed the death of HCR numerous times, including this piece by Kristol equally pathetic cohort Fred Barnes following Scott Brown's Senate victory that is headlined, "The Health Care Bill Is Dead." (Oops, sorry Fred, I guess it was only "mostly dead" and you weren't aware Obama has Miracle Max on his payroll.)
Yet despite Kristol's plotting and boasting, HCR has passed. His dream of doing to Obama what he did to Clinton 17 years ago lies in ruins. Does he swallow his pride and admit he was wrong? Does he accept defeat? Does he perhaps apologize and say he made a mistake and the GOP should have taken David Frum's advice instead?
Of course not! This is Kristol, after all! So, borrowing from Jim DeMint's now gleefully mocked "Waterloo" comment, he offer his own Napoleonic take on Obama's success:
Last night's victory was the culmination of Obama's health care effort, which has been his version of Napoleon's Russia campaign. He won a short-term victory, but one that will turn out to mark an infection point on the road to defeat and the beginning of the end of the Democratic party's dominance over American politics. Last night was Obama's Borodino. Obama's Waterloo will be November 6, 2012.
Kristol calls a "repeal" campaign a "one-item Contract With America."
Fighting words, Billy-boy. Except it's the exact opposite of what you said in 1993:
"Health care will prove to be an enormously healthy project for Clinton - and the Democratic Party." So predicts Stanley Greenberg, the president's strategist and pollster. If a Clinton health care plan succeeds without principled Republican opposition, Mr. Greenberg will be right. Because the initiative's inevitably destructive effect on American medical services will not be practically apparent for several years - no Carter-like gas lines, in other words - its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic election prosects in 1996. But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be ever worse - much worse. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle-class by restraining government."
Even Mitt Romney would be impressed by a flip-flop of that magnitude, Billy.