The cracks are beginning to show in the Democratic Party over one of the most unpopular provisions of Obamacare. Today Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he would support a delay of the individual mandate if it was part of a spending deal.

“There’s no way I could not vote for it,” Manchin said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast today. “It’s very reasonable and sensible.”

The House and Senate are in the midst of trying to negotiate a deal to keep the government operating with the passage of a continuing resolution. The House passed CR contained defunding for Obamacare, something that Ted Cruz argued for during his 21-plus hour speech this week on the Senate floor. A group of conservative senators led by Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul are pushing to find a way to chip away at Obamacare by attaching provisions to the must pass CR and likely the upcoming deal on extending the debt-ceiling next month.

After Cruz's marathon Obamacare slugfest, pressure has been ratcheted up on his Senate colleagues.  Numerous accounts have been listed of their offices being flooded with phone calls urging wider support for Obamacare delay in the Senate. The next target for anti-Obamacare activists is the swath of red state Democrats, some of whom must face their voters next year. With the unpopularity of the law building, these Democrats could face an increasingly hostile electorate back home urging them to change their stance of support for the President's signature legislative achievement.

Manchin, 66, said he’d be willing to delay the individual mandate as part of the budget negotiations because the Obama administration in July gave businesses an extra year to provide their workers with health insurance.

“Don’t put the mandate on the American public right now,” Manchin said. “Give them at least a year. If you know you couldn’t bring the corporate sector, you gave them a year, don’t you think it’d be fair?”

Bloomberg News cited FreedomWorks' "Burn Your Obamacare Card" efforts when discussing the movement pressuring Members of Congress to support significant changes to the law.

Many of the House Republicans are backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement, which is trying to cripple the law. FreedomWorks, an organization tied to the Tea Party, is targeting college campuses, telling young adults to not sign up for the government-run insurance exchanges scheduled to roll out on Oct. 1.

Senator Manchin may be the first of the red state Democrats to buckle, but Mark Pryor, Bill Nelson and Mark Begich could follow.

Many of us Oregonians never expected this, but last week a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Pacific Greens, Independents and even Pirate Party members (yes, a real political party in Oregon) came together to reject a statist mandate to add fluoride to our pristine mountain water. And the vote wasn't even close:

For the fourth time since 1956, Portlanders on Tuesday night rejected a plan to fluoridate city water, 60 percent to 40 percent.

"There's a libertarian component to Oregon politics ... a kind of opposition to what the establishment might want," said Bill Lunch, a political science professor at Oregon State University. "Those who have more money, despite the kind of popular presumptions in this regard, don't always win elections."

Both campaigns accused the other of stealing yard signs. A thinly veiled anti-fluoride push poll went out to voters. Opponents were described as insensitive to equity issues, while proponents were accused of wanting to willingly pollute the city's famously pure water.

The issue also wound up politicizing a statewide health report that showed falling cavity and tooth decay rates in the state over the past five years. One of the report's authors said she felt pressured by Upstream Health, the group spearheading fluoridation, to present the findings in a certain way.

In the opinion of many, especially in light of the study showing falling cavity rates among Portland children, the expense of fluoridating Portland's water seemed like a solution in search of a problem. Maybe for those who live in other large metro areas, this seems like a no-brainer - after all, most large water systems have been fluoridated for decades. And of course, this was about the chiiiiillllldrrreeennnnn. This progressive blogger was shocked by the results, capturing the mood of many Portland elites:

The fact is that fluoridation would have helped protect kids by increasing dental health.

....

In the wake of Portland’s lopsided decision to reject fluoride people across the country are asking if we reject science in the City of Roses – or more plainly: is Portland just anti-science?

The fear based campaign waged by Clean Water Portland was upsetting enough but the often heard statement by those who identify as progressives that putting fluoride in the water violated their personal choice to take fluoride was perhaps more upsetting.  Portland has never been about “me!” but about “us!”  Not so this week.  The common good lost out to a growing libertarianism that in this case put the needs of children last when they should have gone first.  That children should come first is a bedrock principle of my faith. 

But when faced with a unique opportunity to choose whether this would remain voluntary or become a mandate for all consumers of city water, Portlanders overwhelmingly voted to maintain individual choice when it comes to adding chemicals to their bodies.

Now if only they could come together and realize that the same argument about personal choice applies to Obamacare.

In today's podcast, FreedomWorks Vice President of Health Care Policy Dean Clancy and conservative commentator Michelle Malkin discussed the executive order signed by Presidential candidate and Governor of Texas Rick Perry, mandating immunizations of Gardasil to sixth grade girls to prevent the spread of HPV and related cancers. 

Listen to the podcast!

Malkin believes that immunization mandate by Gov. Perry, which was eventually reversed by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature, reveals what she calls,  "liberty-curtailing impulses" in Perry similar to top-down health care policies found in RomneyCare and ObamaCare.

Clancy offered a few questions to Malkin on the subject:

What kind of apology would it take from Gov. Perry to absolve him?

Could this mandate be seen as a public health issue?

Does the ability to opt-out from the immunization in Gov. Perry's executive order make it less coercive than cradle-to-grave socialized medicine systems like RomneyCare or ObamaCare?

Did crony capitalism and rent-seeking play a role?

If you had to choose, Romney or Perry?

An extremely interesting conversation. Listen now.

Malkin and Clancy both agree that now, the Republican primary, is the time to be critical of Republican candidates for President.

"That's what's wonderful about the whole primary process...thank goodness we have this process," said Malkin. "This benefits all of them and us to be scrutinizing their record and comparing it to their rhetoric."

Clancy agreed.

"We've got to hold them accountable and [there's] the temptation to say well we just got to beat Obama," said Clancy. "We should be unstinting, unblinking in our looking at these folks."

I’d like to bring your attention to a few interesting articles from recent days which argue strongly against the Democrats’ so-called “reform” of our health care system, particularly if you are not very old or sick:

First, from Tyler Cowen in the New York Times, his article explaining “How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off."  Not only would the proposal force people to buy something they don’t want (more on this below), but the structure of the subsidy package would actually create a disincentive for people to earn more money.

Second, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest health care insurers, has done a series of studies on the likely effect of the Democrats’ plans on health insurance premiums in the 14 states in which they operate.  (You can access all 14 reports HERE.)  The results are not pretty (for the Democrats).  In Colorado (where I live), WellPoint shows the following premium impact based on proposed “reforms".  (Note these are “before any adjustment for the increase in medical costs over time.")

In other words, in order to fund a small theoretical decrease in the cost of insurance for the elderly and sick, young healthy people are going to see their health insurance costs explode.  And keep in mind that the Democrats’ plans include massive custs to Medicare funding, so the scenario for the “older” segment is far worse than even this analysis appears.

The WellPoint studies are very detailed, showing each component of the cost increases, such as the impact of guaranteed issue, limiting the age discount, and new taxes on health insurers, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals.

With the subsidies built into Democrats plans, people below 200% or 300% of the poverty line may avoid some of the true cost increase, but only by shoving that increase off to the rest of society.

In other words, the Democrats’ plans are, not surprisingly, a massive transfer of wealth system from the young and relatively young who earn a decent living to the old and poor.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with controlling health care costs and will in fact make recent years’ health care inflation look like a walk in the park.

And third, the Washington Times again brings up the issue of whether the proposed reforms, particularly a federal mandate requiring people to buy something, are constitutional.  While it’s obvious (to me) that the Founders and anyone who understands the Constitution would say such a mandate is clearly unconstitutional, I think a Supreme Court case on the issue would end up 5-4 or 6-3 one way or another.

A particularly interesting aspect of the case would be that even the insane and destructive overbroad interpretation of the commerce clause has always been based on interstate commerce, because “regulating” (i.e. to make regular, not to make all kinds of regulations about, using the language of the time) commerce between the states was the purpose of the language.  However, health insurance is explicitly not interstate commerce; insurers are prohibited from selling policies approved in one state across a border into another state. Indeed, making health insurance interstate is one of the most important true reforms we need to make.

The Democrats are losing the public debate over health care reform, despite what their pawns in the media would like you to belive.  However, they still have enormous majorities in both houses of Congress and enormous debts to the unions who fund their campaigns.  Therefore, it is certainly possible that legislation may pass (probably with fewer GOP votes than you could count on one hand…between both the House and the Senate).  If it does, it will spell electoral disaster for the Democrats in 2010.  And, reversing the order of impact (i.e. legislation on elections), the election results in New Jersey, New York, and Virginia next week could cause “moderate” Democrats in moderate districts to rethink any possible support for Obamalosireidcus-care.