"The apparent skepticism of most voters that government could competently administer the health care sector seems to have been justified—and then some. 

"Gallup reports that 72 percent of Americans see big government, not big business or big labor, as the biggest threat to the nation’s future—the highest number since the question was first asked in 1965. 

"The Obama Democrats assumed Americans would embrace big government policies. They seem to have proved the opposite."

"Congratulations to President Obama. He keeps racking up victories, and now has been named winner of the Lie of the Year award. ... 

"The White House lies go on and on — they haven’t stopped yet, because Jay Carney’s lips still are moving — but even a comprehensive list wouldn’t do justice to Obama’s singular achievement. Remember, he’s said these things repeatedly for years, so you’d need multiplication tables to get a real total.

"Even that wouldn’t tell the whole story. The sin isn’t just the sum of his various false claims. ObamaCare itself is the Big Lie. The whole thing is false. ... 

"It’s the Lie of Forever."

"President Obama is ending his fifth year in office matching the worst public approval ratings of his presidency, with record numbers of Americans saying they disapprove of his job performance and his once-hefty advantages over Republicans in Congress eroded in many areas, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. 

"His position is all the more striking when compared with his standing a year ago, as he was preparing for his second inauguration after a solid reelection victory. That high note proved fleeting as the president faced a series of setbacks, culminating in the botched rollout of his Affordable Care Act two months ago. ... 

"Obama’s standing is of particular concern to congressional Democrats as they look to next year’s midterm elections. Parties that control the White House suffer — sometimes significantly — in midterm campaigns when the president’s approval rating is below 50 percent."

"The 'sticker shock' that many buyers of new, ACA-compliant health plans have experienced—with premiums 30% higher, or more, than their previous coverage—has only begun. The costs borne by individuals will be even more obvious next year as more people start having to pay higher deductibles and copays. ... 

"The 'I can't keep my doctor' shock will also hit more and more people in coming months. To keep prices to consumers as low as possible—given cost pressures generated by the government's rules, controls and coverage mandates—insurance companies in many cases are offering plans that have very restrictive networks, with lower-cost providers that exclude some of the best physicians and hospitals. ... 

"The next shock will come when the scores of millions outside the individual market—people who are covered by employers, in union plans, or on Medicare and Medicaid—experience the downsides of ObamaCare. There will be longer waits for hospital visits, doctors' appointments and specialist treatment, as more people crowd fewer providers."

"Barack Obama is not just late to discover the most elementary workings of government. With alarming regularity, he professes obliviousness to the workings of his own government. He claims, for example, to have known nothing about the IRS targeting scandal, the AP phone records scandal, the NSA tapping of Angela Merkel. And had not a clue that the centerpiece of his signature legislative achievement — the online Obamacare exchange, three years in the making — would fail catastrophically upon launch. Or that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose their private health plans. 

"Hence the odd spectacle of a president expressing surprise and disappointment in the federal government — as if he’s not the one running it. Hence the repeated no-one-is-more-upset-than-me posture upon deploring the nonfunctioning Web site, the IRS outrage, the AP intrusions and any number of scandals from which Obama tries to create safe distance by posing as an observer. He gives the impression of a man on a West Wing tour trying out the desk in the Oval Office, only to be told that he is president of the United States."

"In a letter sent late Wednesday, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa reminded Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that obstructing a congressional investigation is a crime. 

"Issa's Committee has been looking into the details of how Obamacare was implemented, along with the major problems with Healthcare.gov and has requested a number of documents from HHS, none of which he's received. The documents requested pertain to companies hired by HHS to build and operate Healthcare.gov. 

"'The Department [HHS] subsequently instructed those companies not to comply with the Committee's request. The Department's hostility toward questions from Congress and the media about the implementation of Obamcare is well known. The Department's most recent effort to stonewall, however, has morphed from mere obstinacy into criminal obstruction of a congressional investigation,' Issa wrote. ... 

"Thursday, the Oversight Committee will hold a hearing about Obamacare's impact on premiums and provider networks as millions continue to see skyrocketing insurance rates, loss of health insurance and a loss of preferred doctors."

"Conservatives had better start paying attention to the budget battle raging in Washington: If things go south — and they are poised to do just that — the tea party’s single greatest policy victory, the sequester, could be destroyed. And worse yet, it could be destroyed in exchange for nothing. ... 

'"The sequester is the only place where conservatives have gotten a victory,' Americans for Prosperity spokeswoman Nicole Kaebing told The Daily Caller. 'It’s the one place where we have gotten both parties and the president to agree to actually cut spending. It’s silly to walk that back. We have this victory, and Republicans should not be voting to increase government spending.'"

"Obama is playing a strange game: The more he speaks untruthfully, the more he resorts to emphatic intensifiers that instead confirm that he is speaking untruthfully. In turn, Obama’s audiences play an even stranger game: The more they hear their president speak, the more they are impressed that he can sound so sincere in being so nonchalantly insincere and mellifluously misleading. When I first heard, 'You can keep your doctor and your health plan,' I thought, 'That can’t be true; he knows it can’t be true; and the American people must know it can’t be true' — and, then, I shrugged: 'But he’s hit upon a winning lie.' 

"And so he did — until now."

"Six months after the Internal Revenue Service's inspector general revealed that the tax-collection agency had been targeting conservative organizations for added scrutiny and delaying their applications for tax-exempt status, the IRS has proposed new rules for handling political activity by nonprofits. The proposed rules would plunge the agency deeper into political regulation. 

"The rules would upset more than 50 years of settled law and practice by limiting the ability of certain tax-exempt nonprofits, organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, to conduct nonpartisan voter registration and voter education. Such organizations would be forbidden to leave records of officeholder votes and public statements on their websites in the two months before an election. ... 

"This is not about taxes, so what is it really about? 

"What the left wants is the disclosure of private information about conservative donors. In cases involving unions, the NAACP and other civil-rights organizations in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, the Supreme Court made clear that people have a right to engage in anonymous political activity."

"It’s not the voters who hate Obamacare the most who are going to matter in next year’s elections. It’s the independents who frequently side with Democrats but could, if propelled by a distaste for the health care law, take a serious look at the GOP in 2014. And on this front, Democrats have a big problem with one of their most crucial constituencies — white women. 

"Polling provided to National Journal by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that white women have soured considerably on the law, especially in the month since its botched rollout. The skepticism runs especially deep among blue-collar women, sometimes known as 'waitress moms,' whose deeply pessimistic attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act should riddle Democratic candidates with anxiety. ... 

"According to Kaiser, 40 percent of college-educated white women hold a 'very unfavorable' view of the law — 10 points higher than a month ago. An additional 10 percent view the law 'somewhat unfavorably.' A month ago, those two groups together totaled just 42 percent. ...   

"And that’s not all. Democrats should be far more worried about white women who do not have a higher education. The numbers are astounding: In the latest Kaiser poll, 50 percent have a 'very unfavorable' view of the law — 9 points higher than in October. An additional 13 percent view it 'somewhat unfavorably.' Indeed, antipathy among blue-collar white women runs even deeper than the most conservative white demographic group, blue-collar white men (59 percent of whom hold an unfavorable view, Kaiser found)."