By Donald Lambro, Washington Times

Queen Nancy Pelosi has the votes and she will pass Obamacare

Public support for the Obama administration’s sweeping government health care reforms is declining as opponents continue to pack congressional town-hall meetings with some analysts suggesting the president may have to settle for more modest legislation.

Public-policy analysts say that nearly two weeks of intense and often angry town-hall debate back home during August recess has thrown the White House on the defensive and turned its hopes for a full-blown overhaul of the health care system into a steeper climb.

"Publicity attached to town halls has kept the administration from framing the debate to its advantage. They have their work cut out for the rest of the month," said Thomas E. Mann, senior analyst in governance studies at the liberal Brookings Institution.

But Mr. Mann said he still believes "a modest health reform bill, passed exclusively by Democrats, with [Maine Sen. Olympia J.] Snowe the only possible Republican vote in support, will clear Congress by the end of the year. But there will be many ups and downs before getting there."

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FoxNews.com

Union thugs attack citizens concerned about Obamacare

A town hall meeting to discuss President Obama’s health care reform descended into shouting and violence in a Tampa, Fla., suburb Thursday as angry opponents clashed with event organizers.

Close to 1,500 people came to Ybor City to attend the session on health care and insurance reform featuring Democratic State Rep. Betty Reed and U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor before the event exploded into a near riot.

According to local media reports, the larger-than-expected crowd gathered outside the Hillsborough County Children’s Board building, where several hundred people, mostly in opposition to government health care, began to loudly chant and scuffle with organizers posted at doorways after the auditorium filled to capacity.

A freelance videographer was roughed up in an altercation, which damaged his camera equipment and glasses, and at least one man was treated for minor injuries after a scuffle left his shirt partially torn from his body.

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By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, Politico

David Axelrod and Jim Messina direct new Obama offensive

Top White House aides gave Senate Democrats a recess battle plan on Thursday, arming the lawmakers with tips for avoiding disastrous town hall meetings while showing them polling on popular aspects of the reform effort.

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told senators to focus on the insured and how they would benefit from “consumer protections" in the overhaul, such as ending the practice of denying insurance based on preexisting conditions and ensuring the continuity of coverage between jobs.

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.

And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.

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By Erica Werner,  Associated Press

President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to taxing health care benefits, something he campaigned hard against while running for president, according to senators who met with him Tuesday.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., raised the issue with Obama during a private meeting with the president and other Democratic senators and later reported the president’s position: “It’s on the table. It’s an option.”

The White House said later that Obama did not want to go that route.

“The president made it clear during the campaign that he has serious concerns about taxing health care benefits,” Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin said in a statement. “He stated again his belief that health reform can’t wait another year, and that while all options should be considered, those options should include the revenue proposals that he included in his budget.”

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By Philip Klein, American Spectator

In 2003, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama described himself to an approving AFL-CIO audience as a “proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.” Single-payer, the health care panacea for progressives, is a more academic way of describing a socialized system in which government is the sole purchaser of medical care.

At the time, Obama cautioned, “we may not get there immediately, because first we’ve got to take back the White House, and we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.”

Six years later, Democrats have taken over both chambers of Congress and Obama himself now resides in the White House. These days, he describes single-payer as the ideal model “if we were starting from scratch” but recognizes that too much is vested in the current system to scrap private insurance entirely.

The solution he proposed during the campaign, one which is likely to appear in some form in whatever health care proposal Democrats draw up in Congress, is to create a new government-run insurance plan.