Dan Riehl, a fairly prominent right-wing blogger, is very, very angry over the Democrats' plans to use reconciliation to pass healthcare reform.
How angry is he? In a post on the subject and on President Obama yesterday, he told Obama -- whom he called "you distasteful, malevolent little quisling punk" to "reconcile this" -- and then quoted the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. He followed that up by writing:
The cause is well known and it is just. When the alleged leader of a democratic republic places his own wishes so above those of the complete body politic, he is no longer worthy of the title, leader, no matter what office he might occupy.
Only a fool with no clear appreciation of, or for, America past and present, would dare undertake what this pustule in the White House is attempting to do. It is contingent upon the Republican Party to undertake every step, every maneuver it can to bring this government to a halt ....
If the GOP lacks the courage, or the ability to stop this pathetic power grab by the un-American, decadent Left - an ideology that has already failed over and over throughout much of the world - then it becomes not just a right, but a responsibility for the American people to take their country back from the political elites that have already bankrupted it.
If that weren't enough, Riehl had a topper. Calling Obama "[t]his neophyte, this joke we have in the White House," he wrote that the president "has absolutely no idea of the force and the rage he is about to unleash on him and his entire political party." He added, "If there are not enough responsible adults left within his party to rein in this accidental, affirmative action jerk, this self-styled, extremely flawed little man, then his party is worthless to America. It deserves to be marginalized electorally and, ultimately, utterly destroyed, before being relegated to the dung heap of history with the rest of the marxist (sic), socialist clowns Americans have dispatched before."
Other bloggers weren't shying away from Riehl after this, much less disavowing it. Indeed, two of the right's biggest bloggers endorsed it.
On Twitter, RedState's Erick Erickson -- who now regularly appears on CNN, and whose site often hosts exclusives from top elected Republicans -- called what Riehl wrote "One of the best blog posts I've read in a while." Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds linked to the post and said, of Riehl, "Is he an outlier, or a leading indicator? The Dems had better hope it’s the former..."
Update: Meant, but forgot, to make one additional point that a comment reminded me of. It's true that polls generally indicate that the American public is against Democratic healthcare proposals generally (though not specifically). But this government isn't supposed to be run by poll data; it's actual votes that matter.
Riehl can rail all he wants about "the alleged leader of a democratic republic plac[ing] his own wishes so above those of the complete body politic," but the simple fact of the matter is that even by the standard most favorable to Riehl's argument, the senators who'd vote for reconciliation represent roughly 70 percent of the country. On the other hand, the senators who'd vote to sustain a Republican filibuster represent 49 percent of the country.
