Admittedly, nobody actually watches this stuff anymore, but it’s still just the smallest bit distressing to see the President threaten an entire industry.
The President doesn’t handle opposition to his will all that well, does he? Even the New York Times is forced to admit that this was ‘unusually harsh;’ Instapundit was harsh himself, but mostly just accurate when he called this ‘desperate.’ See also Business Week, particularly for some actual fact-checking of some of the claims made by the President (I’ll do one right now: that ‘bipartisan’ support he’s claiming is ONE Republican Senator who went along with ONE bill that was going to advance to the floor anyway). Monday’s going to be a fascinating day, really.
Exit question, as Allahpundit would have it: how much of this is just pique over the administration having to drop the Humana probe? I’m guessing at least a third.
Moe Lane
PS: I think that we may safely assume that the $21 million that the insurance industry gave to Democrats in 2008 will represent the high-water mark of that particular section of the economy. I hope nobody at the DSCC, DCCC, or DNC was actually counting on that particular revenue stream…
I disagree on insurance company donations. They’ll donate more to Democrats, in an attempt to buy protection. The last thing they’d do is shift money to Republicans — all that would do is INCREASE the Democrats’ desire to shut them down.