“[I]t is not within our power as members of Congress, it’s not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution for us to design and create a national takeover of health care. Nor is it within our ability to be able to delegate that responsibility to the executive.”

It is true, of course, that the power of Congress “to design and create a national takeover of health care” is not stated anywhere in the founding document.

However, as Birkey notes, Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution — where the “powers” of Congress are “enumerated”  — includes the following:

The Congress shall have Power To … provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;

It also includes this power:

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

I’m no constitutional scholar, but enacting laws to reform the health care system to help provide insurance to the roughly 45 million Americans currently going without sounds like it might be covered under a reasonable reading of the “general welfare” clause.

Maybe Bachmann can be forgiven — interpreting the Constitution never really was her strong point.

“In my newsletter I went a step too far in saying that she is a racist because I don’t know her and there’s no evidence [of racism] in her court decisions,” Gingrich told Sean Hannity. Nevertheless, he said, “it’s clear that her quote is clearly racist,” referring to the infamous “wise Latina woman” line. “It’s also clear … when you look at her writing and her speeches, she is quite radical. When you look at her judgments on the court bench, she’s not nearly as radical in her judgments. People have to ask themselves, as a Supreme Court Justice, would she be the radical we’re seeing, or would she be much more cautious?”

I think that was supposed to be the softer side of Newt.

Since I wrote that piece, Obama’s gone on to have many more gaffes, many due to teleprompter errors. And people – especially conservative media – are starting to notice.

The evidence is last night’s episode of “Hannity,” with a panel that includes Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs — too extreme for Little Green Footballs, but just right for Fox News prime time.

“Just like the left-wing hammered Bush’s gaffes until the public started questioning his intelligence,” argues Conant, “Obama is providing more than enough fodder to be taken down the same path.”

I don’t think this is true. There’s a ceiling on how much Republicans will attack President Obama over speech flubs because, frankly, they’ve spent years calling him “articulate.” The man rose to national prominence by giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention and rescued his 2008 primary bid with a speech on race in America. Bush, by contrast, barrelled into the public eye as the presidential scion who had spent years drinking and failing at business, and remade himself as an imperfect, but compassionate, public servant. If he botched a debate with John Kerry, it was because Kerry was a fancy double-talker, and Bush was blunt. The man reinforced his image.

All that said, conservatives have had a surprising amount of success in getting the press to cover TelePrompTer mishaps that used to get ignored.