“One of the biggest mistakes made by Bill and Hillary Clinton was when they threw Dick Morris under the bus,” said one of the attendees at the 26th Annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner on Saturday at the DFW Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas. “Their loss was our gain,” said another. The reference was to the alienation that occurred between Morris and the Clintons in 1996 after the canny political strategist helped elect President Clinton to a second term. Since then, Morris has become one of the most respected conservative commentators in the country and a regular guest on the Fox News Network. As the keynote speaker at the elegantly orchestrated Republican Party extravaganza, Morris spoke about the Obama, Reid, Pelosi “experiment” with healthcare. “The cost of Obama-Care would be a trillion dollars over ten years and it would have to be paid for with cuts in Medicare and several tax increases,” Morris said to a capacity crowd in the huge ballroom. Most of his remarks centered on President Obama’s intransigence concerning the legislation that would make sweeping changes in the way Americans receive medical treatment. 

     “It’s not about making our healthcare better; it’s about Obama having government control over how healthcare is administered and who gets it,” said the author of the recent bestseller, “Catastrophe,” which, as Mark Davis, national talk show host, columnist and perpetual emcee for the event, described as having “The longest subtitle you’ve ever read: How Obama, congress, and the special interests are transforming a slump into a crash, freedom into socialism, and a disaster into a catastrophe… and how to fight back!” While several hundred guests enjoyed a sumptuous filet mignon, most of the red meat was served up by Morris and high-ranking GOP elected officials who took to the podium to express their disapproval of a Democratic administration in Washington that appears to be tone-deaf when it comes to the majority of Americans who, according to every major poll, have rejected this president’s attempt to force his big government agenda on them. Morris suggested that the White House occupant is desperate to get some version of his bill passed. “If Obama loses this fight, he won’t be able to get any other meaningful legislation passed and will probably be a one-term president.” Morris went on to hint that Hillary Clinton, whom he described as Margaret Thatcher, when compared to Barack Obama, might be waiting in the wings to mount a Primary challenge in 2012. 

     During a VIP reception prior to the main event, Morris posed for photos and mingled with the guests. He couldn’t have been more accommodating! As the only editor at the exclusive gathering, I took the liberty of doing a one-on-one interview with the political mastermind. “What are the 2 most important issues facing the country today?” “Without a doubt, it’s jobs and the economy,” Morris said, adding, “If the Democrats don’t do something about this humongous debt, we’re looking at an economic meltdown of cataclysmic proportions.” “Dick (I was getting familiar by now), do you think the Democrats will use reconciliation (also known as the nuclear option, which only requires a simply majority of senate votes to pass a bill, blocking debate on it, and a filibuster against it)  to pass the healthcare bill?” “Well, if they do, in the face of polling that consistently shows that Americans don’t want that monstrosity, they will pay dearly in November,” he replied with a confident smile. The man has an encyclopedic mind for facts and figures, rattling off some numbers and percentages that challenge the less mathematically inclined. Moreover, he did it without notes or a teleprompter. 

     Among the presenters at the fast-paced event was Dianne Edmondson, Denton County GOP Chair. Ms. Edmonson, always a riveting cheerleader for the Party, talked about the unusually high percentage of early voting in the county, which rivals the presidential election in 2008. Other GOP luminaries included Congressmen Michael Burgess and Ron Marchant of Texas Districts 26 and 24 respectively. Last week, Dr. Burgess was named the top Republican on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. The duties include oversight of federal agencies, departments and programs, which includes conducting investigations into matters within the jurisdiction of the committee. That means; if the GOP takes over the Congress in November, Burgess will chair that very powerful committee. In the meantime, according to Dick Morris, the fight goes on to stop Obama from forcing “socialism” on the United States of America. To help us do that he urges us to go to his website at dickmorris.com to see the names and phone numbers of 30 Democratic congressmen who are vulnerable and wary of the voter backlash if they continue to support Obama-Care.