"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)."

"Young Americans are turning against Barack Obama and Obamacare, according to a new survey of millennials, people between the ages of 18 and 29 who are vital to the fortunes of the president and his signature health care law. 

"The most startling finding of Harvard University's Institute of Politics: A majority of Americans under age 25 -- the youngest millennials -- would favor throwing Obama out of office. 

"The survey, part of a unique 13-year study of the attitudes of young adults, finds that America's rising generation is worried about its future, disillusioned with the U.S. political system, strongly opposed to the government's domestic surveillance apparatus, and drifting away from both major parties. 'Young Americans hold the president, Congress and the federal government in less esteem almost by the day, and the level of engagement they are having in politics are also on the decline,' reads the IOP's analysis of its poll. 'Millennials are losing touch with government and its programs because they believe government is losing touch with them.' 

"The results blow a gaping hole in the belief among many Democrats that Obama's two elections signaled a durable grip on the youth vote."

"Mr. Obama’s problem now is that people think he is smart. 

"They think, as they look at his health-care vows, that either he didn’t know how bad his program was, what dislocations it would cause, what a disturbance it would be to the vast middle class of America . . . 

"Or he knew, and deliberately misled everyone.  

"If they thought he wasn’t very bright, they might give him some leeway on that question. But they think he’s really smart.  

"So they think he knew. 

"And deliberately misled."

"President Obama needs to fire himself. Not literally, of course, but practically: He needs to shake up his team so thoroughly that the new blood imposes change on how he manages the federal bureaucracy and leads. 

"A series of self-inflicted wounds during his fifth year in office, capped by the botched launch of the Affordable Care Act, have Americans questioning the president's competence and credibility. History suggests that second-term presidents rarely recover after their approval ratings fall as much as Obama's have this year. 

"History also suggests that there are two types of White House shake-ups. The first is mostly cosmetic and is aimed at sending a signal that the president is serious. He fires somebody, anybody, as a sacrificial lamb. The second is deep cleansing -- that rare occasion when a president rebuilds his team to change himself. 

"The latter is what Obama must do."