RUSH: Here’s Mark “Maxi” Shields. This is Friday night, PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff speaking with “Maxi” Shields about Obamacare and Obama’s press conference, talking about the problems with the rollout and what he’s trying to do to fix it, and Judy Woodruff said, “With the president acknowledging yesterday that he was not on top of this,” Mark, he really didn’t know all these problems, “what could he be doing and saying at this point to get beyond this?”

SHIELDS: It wasn’t, “This is mine and I’m gonna make sure that it never happens again. This is going to work.” Judy, this is beyond the Obama administration. If this goes down, if the Obamac– if health care, the Affordable Care Act is deemed a failure, this is the end — I — I — I — I really mean it — of liberal government. Time and again, social programs have made the difference in this country! The public confidence for that will be so depleted, so diminished that I really think the change — the — the equation of American politics changes.

RUSH: Holy smokes, this guy believes it!

They really think that if Obamacare goes it’s the end of liberal government? It does have to go. I mean, there’s no question it has to go, but the end of the liberal government? They’re really sitting there thinking that? You know what this means? Maxi is really concerned here that what’s gonna happen is that all these low-information people are gonna suddenly wake up and realize that government’s not the answer, if this thing goes down the tubes. They’re really worried that that could happen.

That’s what he’s saying. (interruption) Don’t sit there and frown at me.

It’s exactly what he’s saying. “It’s the end of liberal government. Time and again social programs have made the difference in this country,” and that’s FDR, folks. That’s the New Deal. That is going back to the New Deal. Ah, this makes me so tempted to start talking about the Kennedy assassination. It’s still early. I gotta keep that in reserve. So, anyway, he wasn’t quite finished. He says here (summarized) “The public confidence for liberal government has been so depleted, so diminished, that I really think the equation of American politics changes.”

Then he added this…

SHIELDS: The one thing that could save the Democrats, having given that apocalyptic assessment, is the Republicans. They are rooting for failure. They’re just cheering for failure! There’s not a sense of what we can do to make this work or, “This isn’t gonna work, but we’re gonna come up with something better.” There just isn’t!

RUSH: Well, I can disapprove that, because even Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is out talking about the need for an alternative to this, which I kind of cringe at. But Republicans are rooting for failure of Obamacare? Now, I gotta be very, very careful here, ’cause this could be a trap. But are the Republicans rooting for failure of Obamacare, or are, instead, Republicans actually rooting for a health care system that works? I mean, what does Obamacare failing really mean?

Now, to somebody like Mark “Maxi” Shields, it’s an indictment of liberalism. It’s the end of big government. It’s the end of Obama’s credibility. To me, Obamacare failing is almost the equivalent to saving the health care business, the whole health care industry, the whole health care apparatus of this country. Obamacare succeeding is going to destroy it. Obamacare succeeding is nothing more than the politicization of health care, the enshrined politicization of health care.

That’s what Obamacare succeeding is. Obamacare doesn’t fix health care. Obamacare doesn’t improve it. Obamacare does not lower costs. It doesn’t make it more available. Obamacare doesn’t do anything but siphon one-sixth of the private sector into government control and put it in control of Democrats. It just politicizes it. That’s all it does. Those who are opposed to Obamacare are trying to save the health care industry. They’re tying to maintain the best health care system in the world.

Obamacare destroys it, and I doubt that Shields has any concept of that.

To him, it’s nothing but a political litmus test. Obamacare being passed and being imposed on people equals liberal dominance and success. Whatever happens to people and their health and their health care and their insurance obviously is irrelevant to him, because it gets worse under Obamacare. The disconnect here is profound, as far as I’m concerned. To these people, it’s nothing more than their madcap desire to take control over something — and if they fail to get control over it, “Oh, no, that’s the end of liberal government,” which is what?

The control of everybody.

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RUSH: Okay, this has become now a theme on the left. Mark “Maxi” Shields on Friday night and now Todd Purdum (who is Mr. Dee Dee Myers) writing in The Politico. He writes, “[T]he fiasco of the launch of Obama’s sweeping health care overhaul has put the reputation of Big Government progressivism at risk for at least this generation. And its future now rests on the president’s ability to reverse that debacle and to demonstrate that his approach to covering millions of uninsured Americans is not only an enlightened — but workable — policy. …

“ObamaÂ’s challenge is now nothing less than to assure that the cycle of progressivism he presumed to usher in, and the period of renewed faith and confidence in the transformative powers of government that he promised, does not die aborning. That will be no easy task.” So Obamacare is now threatening the reputation of socialism, and if Obama is unable to reverse this be with then the reputation of big-government socialism is at risk for the generation. You know what my question is?

What big government program hasn’t failed?

Why should the failure of Obamacare mean the end of liberalism?

I know what these guys are saying. They can’t cover this one up. This is all on them. They can’t shift the blame to anybody. The Republicans didn’t vote for this. The Republicans are all opposed to this. But I’m gonna tell you, I don’t know what they’re gonna do, folks, because the cancellations for people that have employee-provided, employer-provided insurance? Those cancellation notices start going out soon for next year. We’re talking 158 million people that are gonna lose the doctor and the policy that they like, and it’s gonna be far more than 8% of the population.
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RUSH: So apparently the message has gone out from on high. You Democrats, you had better circle the wagons around Obamacare, and you had better stop criticizing it because our way of life depends on this. Mark “Maxi” Shields and now here’s Todd Purdum in The Politico, they’re all saying this could be the end of life as we know it. You gotta circle the wagons. You’ve gotta support Obamacare. You can’t abandon it.

Now, I’ve got a couple stories here. Scott Brown has a column at Fox News, the former Massachusetts senator. “Democrats Flee From Obamacare Disaster, But Voters Will Find Them in 2014.” His point is that these Democrats who are trying to make it look like they oppose Obamacare and they’re very upset, and they want you to be able to keep your policy, he thinks that they’re trying to cover themselves for 2014 but that voters are gonna remember and they’re not going to let these Democrats get away with temporarily abandoning something they voted for. That’s his theory.

But, I mean, there are two or three stories in my Stack today about Democrats abandoning Obamacare, Democrats who are vulnerable in 2014, who are running away from it. And I think the Regime’s scared of this. I really do. And that’s the message that has gone out, you better not run away from us, ’cause it isn’t just Obama, it isn’t just Obamacare. It’s your way of life. It’s liberalism. It’s big government. It’s gonna go by the wayside if you people abandon us and let this thing go down the tubes.

I don’t know if you call it panic or what have you, but I think it is. These people, folks, they’re not that bright. I mean, they’re shortsighted and they make pronouncements. They just pronounce that we’re gonna cover the uninsured, and it happens. Obamacare, the law of the land, and it happens. And it doesn’t just happen. You don’t just say I’m passing a law that insures the uninsured, and it just happens. (interruption) Jim Moran is predicting a mutiny if what isn’t fixed? If Obamacare is not fixed, Jim Moran, Baghdad Jim Moran is predicting — (interruption) Virginia. Oh, okay. Yeah, they say McDermott. Baghdad McDermott. Washington. Jim Moran, Virginia, who is a hack, but that’s being nice.

So these guys are predicting a mutiny in Obamacare falls apart. Well, this is where Obama not caring about the Democrats all these years might come back and bite him, because he’s not gone out of his way to help ’em, give ’em money. So we’ll see. We’ll just see what kind of loyalty they really have to him.