Thursday, June 28, 2012

Is Health Care Iwo Jima?

Geopolitics boffins like to draw the distinction between strategy and tactics (maybe strategy, operations and tactics, but it's a detail).  They point out that tactical victories can lead to strategic defeats.  Exhibit A: Pearl Harbor, perhaps the greatest tactical victory of the 20th Century.  It brought America into the war and led to the destruction of the home islands.  Had Japan simply tended to its Pacific knitting and ignored the United States, it might (we can imagine) have built itself a secure Pacific Empire.   Indeed, Japan was still enjoying something close to tactical victory until almost the last days of the war (think Okinawa, Iwo Jima).  And without these tactical achievements, it might not have suffered the atomic attacks, maybe not even the firebombing of the great cities.

So, is the Romney Obamacare decision Iwo Jima? Will it so energize the insulted and injured that they will come roaring to victory in November, and repeal after that?

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