When a man knows he’s defending the indefensible, as President Barack Obama knew in his presser Friday, he falls back on ad hominem slander of the men trying to remove the indefensible.

Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail.  Their number-one priority.  The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care; and presumably, repealing all those benefits I just mentioned—kids staying on their parents’ plan, seniors getting discounts on their prescription drugs, I guess a return to lifetime limits on insurance, people with pre-existing conditions continuing to be blocked from being able to get health insurance.

And

The—the—the notion is simply that those 30 million people, or the 150 million who are benefiting from the other aspects of affordable care, will be better off without it.  That’s their assertion, not backed by fact, not backed by any evidence.

And

And let me just make one last point about this.  The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea.  What you should be thinking about is, how can we advance and improve ways for middle class families to have some security so that if they work hard they can get ahead and their kids can get ahead.

Of course, nothing in Obama’s diatribe could be farther from the truth.  The House has already passed—included in their budgets of the last few years—a number of reforms to our health care system that actually reinvigorate the health insurance industry, rather than converting it to a privately funded, Federally mandated welfare program; do drive down costs of both insurance and health care; and thereby do make both more available to those who want the care and/or the insurance.  All while leaving the choice and the assessment of need not in the hands of government bureaucrats through one-size-fits-all diktat, but squarely in the hands of those who know best—we American citizens.  Furthermore, these alternatives all represent market solutions that enhance the health and prosperity of Americans; they are not the failed policies of centrally directed economies.

On the matter of shutting down the government if one doesn’t get one’s way, it’s true enough that many Republicans have said that that’s a preferable alternative to funding the abomination of Obamacare.  However, the only ones actually threatening to shut down the government are Obama and his Senate colleague, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV).  They’re the ones who’ve said, in the one case, he won’t permit a budget that doesn’t fully support Obamacare even to come to a vote on his Senate floor, and in the other case, he’ll veto a budget bill that doesn’t fully support Obamacare.  In that latter case, he’s also said that he’ll veto any bill that doesn’t raise taxes, increase spending, and raise the debt ceiling commensurately—preferring to further damage our credit rating and our economy to not getting his way.

The decision to shut down the government is entirely in these two Democrats’ hands.  Nowhere else.

And let me make just one last point.  In the end, as is Obama’s wont, he wouldn’t even answer the question put to him.

Fox News’ Ed Henry: You recently decided on your own to delay a key part of [Obamacare]. And I wonder, if you pick and choose what parts of the law to implement, couldn’t your successor down the road pick and choose whether they’ll implement your law and keep it in place?

President Obama: With respect to health care, I didn’t simply choose to delay this on my own. This was in consultation with businesses all across the country….  We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.

But there was no consultation with the law itself, which unequivocally mandates that “key part” begin 1 January, and there was no consultation with the Constitution he’s sworn to uphold, which unequivocally mandates that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….”

And—carefully—there was no answer to the question of whether, himself having picked and chosen, a successor couldn’t do the same and gut Obamacare.