The Democrat Banzai Charge

Wikipedia defines "Banzai charge" as a term applied during World War II by the Allied forces to human wave attacks mounted by infantry forces of the Imperial Japanese Army. These attacks were usually launched as a suicide attack to avoid surrender and dishonor or as a final attempt at maximizing the odds of success in the face of usually numerically superior Allied forces.

It seems very fitting to characterize the last-ditch efforts to pass ObamaCare with reconciliation as a Banzai charge.

The Wall Street Journal today opined:

A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.

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The vehicle is "reconciliation," a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.

President Obama is expected to endorse reconciliation in remarks this morning.

And in doing so, Obama is asking volunteering Democrats in Congress to Banzai charge into the withering fire of voter discontent. If voters who elected Obama as the great unifier have become disillusioned by his failure to bring about the change he campaigned on, just wait until Democrats pass Obama's health care reforms.

We can only "hope" that voters will remember the damage wrought by liberal exteemism married to a complicit press and prevent a Democrat majority for generations to come.