"For now, congressional Democrats — who've been distancing themselves from Obamacare with increasing frequency by political necessity — can take some comfort in the Web site fixes the administration just announced. For a while, it seemed like each day brought worse news about Obamacare than the last. Sunday was not one of those days, at least according to early data. 

"But the larger fight to define Obamacare is just warming up. And nothing the administration announced Sunday did anything to change that."

"Perhaps no custom reveals our character as a Nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day."

"For years, GOP warnings about Obamacare were about something that had not yet arrived. People had not experienced Obamacare, did not have friends who had experienced it and didn't fully understand what it was. Many tuned out the Republican alarms. 

"Now that has changed. Millions of Americans are unhappy with what they have experienced under Obamacare — canceled policies, higher premiums and sky-high deductibles. They are also much more likely to believe predictions of future problems. They've seen what has already happened and now know it can get worse. ... 

"In the three and a half years between March 23, 2010, the day Obamacare was signed into law, and Oct. 1, 2013, the day its implementation got under way, millions of voters, no matter what doubts they might have had, thought it best to give Obamacare a chance to work. That's why they didn't respond to the GOP's dire warnings. But now, they've seen what Obamacare can mean in their lives. And they won't be buying any more promises."

"Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park. Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not in recess. He knows that his HHS is promulgating regulations that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not constitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. This is a might-makes-right presidency, and if Barack Obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law."

"My fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

"The Obama administration once gave us 'man-caused disasters' for acts of terrorism and 'workplace violence' for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to mask the Obamacare disaster. 

"The president and his advisors apparently knew long ago that millions of the insured would face cancellations or premium hikes once Obamacare would be fully implemented. Yet to get the 906-page bill passed, they had to convince the public of the very opposite scenario. So they repeated ironclad guarantees that no one would lose their coverage or doctors -- 'period!' 

"Now the administration explains the deception by going after both the ethics of the insurers and the intelligence of the previously insured. That task required language to be altered. The newly canceled health plans are suddenly rebranded by the administration as 'subpar.' Only in autumn 2013 is the supposedly unaware public told that, years ago, 'bad apple' insurance companies sold them 'substandard' plans."

"Just days before HealthCare.gov crashed on takeoff, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev), who has often suggested that the president's opponents are bigots, railed on the Senate floor: 'Obamacare has been the law for four years. Why don't they get a life and talk about something else?' 

"'We are going to accept nothing that relates to Obamacare,' he added. 'Let them find something else to be weird about.'  

"In recent polls, 58 percent of Americans have a negative view of the health-care law, 54 percent disapprove of Obama and 50 percent think he isn't honest or trustworthy. Are they all racists and weirdos?"

"Seven score and 10 years ago, Abraham Lincoln delivered his sacred speech on the meaning of free government. Edward Everett, a former secretary of state and the principal speaker for the consecration of the Gettysburg cemetery, instantly recognized the power of the president's 272 words. ... 

"Barack Obama is not scheduled to be present at Gettysburg on Tuesday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the address. Maybe he figured that the world would little note, nor long remember, what he said there. Maybe he thought the comparisons with the original were bound to be invidious, and rightly so.

"If that's the case, it would be the beginning of wisdom for this presidency. Better late than never. ... 

"[T]he president's no-show at Gettysburg suggests he might be trying to follow Old Abe's counsel in a fruitful way: 'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool,' the Great Emancipator is reported to have said, 'than to speak and to remove all doubt.'"

"The Obama administration has repeatedly said that the health-insurance-plan cancellations receiving so much attention in the news in recent days will affect only the 5 percent of Americans who purchase insurance on the individual market. The Department of Justice, however, in a brief filed in federal court last month, conceded that the number may be much higher. According to the administration’s numbers, nearly 80 million additional Americans, 'a majority' of those on employer-sponsored health plans, may also be out of luck. 

"'It is projected that more group health plans will transition to the requirements under the regulations as time goes on,' DOJ lawyers wrote in response to court challenge to the law’s requirement that insurance plans provide coverage of contraception. 'Defendants have estimated that a majority of group health plans will have lost their grandfather status by the end 2013.'"

"The White House's Thursday play will not end cancellation notices. Fixing Healthcare.gov simply gives more Americans access to the budget-busting premiums and limited networks within the exchange. Grandfathering, to the extent it happens, only pushes those premiums higher. So does a delay in the individual mandate. Further exemptions, say to taxes, strip money Democrats are banking on. Extending enrollment periods does nothing but provide Americans more time to contemplate their miserable choices. 

"Grandfathering current and canceled plans only adds to the confusion. And the White House's decision to do this administratively reopens questions over the legality (and illegality) of the White House's many ObamaCare actions. This doesn't restore credibility; it further undermines it.  

"A Democratic aide this week told The Hill that the party was concerned about 'being dragged into this nonstop cycle' of bad news. It is way too late for that, especially if the GOP continues to stay out of the way and let this be about Democratic liabilities and divisions. The only real 'fix' for this law—and for Democratic political pain—is to scrap it."