It's Not Business, Sonny. It's Strictly Personal

In his actions and rhetoric, Mr. Obama has inverted the famous quote from Michael Corleone (arguably one his role models; after all, Obama says that the Godfather is his favorite movie and has been known to employ rhetoric from it in his speeches and interviews). As Tennessee blogger and Iraq War vet Bob Krumm writes, “It’s Not Business; It’s Strictly Personal:”

Republicans want a delay in Obamacare.  Because of the many significant problems with the rollout of Obamacare, and because he has delayed parts of the law himself some 19 times, President Obama should want a delay in Obamacare too.  One year gives Democrats an opportunity to fix systemic errors in the software, the regulations, and the law.  One year gives nothing at all to the Republicans–nothing–except the opportunity to crow a little bit.

That the President can’t compromise in a way that gives him everything he wants, plus the extra time he needs, is not about business.  It’s strictly personal.

I don’t know if he’s read Krumm’s post, but Wolf Blitzer, of Time-Warner-CNN-HBO-DNC, concurs with the sentiment:

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said the White House should take Republicans’ suggestion and delay Obamacare due to the poor performance of the websites that are facilitating it. “If they weren’t fully ready, they should accept the advice that a lot of Republicans are giving them — delay it another year, get it ready, and make sure it works,” Blitzer said Wednesday.

“They know how to do it, but if they didn’t get it ready on time, then maybe fix the problem and make sure people don’t have to worry about it,” he added.

Since the online exchanges launched last week, users across the country have complained about the website’s glitches. The Obama administration says it does not know how many people have enrolled in a new plan through the exchanges.

Let’s give ’em the benefit of the doubt and assume for a moment that they really don’t know. If so, it’s only because the computers they’re using to tally the number of enrollments keep crashing. Yet another reason why Moe Lane adds that “under normal circumstances the President should be begging us for a year’s delay:”

The problem for the President is that his entire baraka – no, that’s not a pun; it’s precisely the word that I needed and meant – is tied up in being without flaw or blemish. Losing to Republicans will not be seen as threatening to weaken Obama; it will weaken him, not least in the eyes of his most slavish worshipers.  And worshipers is also precisely the world that I needed, and meant.And here’s the thing about humans, when they worship a man as if he was a god.  Things can get remarkably ugly when the god turns out to be a man after all.

As Jonah Goldberg once wrote of Mr. Obama, employing a metaphor inspired by a very different Paramount production, “once you’re the god who bleeds, it’s hard to get the divinity back in the tube, as it were.”

Oh, and speaking of which, Matt Drudge once again discovers the lede buried deep within an AP article: Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 37 percent. Perhaps treating the National Park Service as his personal shock troops hasn’t done much to bolster his MSM acolytes’ early declarations that the president was “above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort of God,” as then-Newsweek editor Evan Thomas once hilariously proclaimed at the apex of leftwing hopenchange fever in 2009.