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Obama: 'Well that's status quo. That's what we have right now'
Today's quotes: “If somebody told you that there is a plan out there that is guaranteed to double your health care costs over the next 10 years, that's guaranteed to result in more Americans losing their health care, and that...
Waterloo: 'Nothing personal'

by Mark Silva

Waterloo is a nice little town in Iowa.

We were thinking of that the other day, when Sen. Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, suggested that healthcare reform could be President Barack Obama's Waterloo, where the GOP breaks the hold the president has heading into next year's midterm elections.

Obama, of course, won in Iowa. That's where his "audacious'' campaign for the White House was launched. His and Huckabee's.

Obama maintains that the healthcare debate "isn't about me.''

And DeMint maintains that "this is not personal.''

"We are attacking the policy,'' DeMint said in an interview on the FOX Business Network today. "The president's trying to make it personal to distract attention from the policies.

"His policies have not met up to his promises yet,'' DeMint said. "We see that on the stimulus plan. He is trying to distract and deflect attention from the real substance of this bill which will take away our freedom to make our own decision about healthcare.''

The Democrats are taking it personally, however. They are airing a TV ad in South Carolina:

"Sen. Jim DeMint is playing politics with our health care, putting the special interests in Washington ahead of South Carolina families and businesses,'' the narrator of the party ad states. "The only plan Jim DeMint supports is no plan at all."

DeMint denounced the ad as full of "false personal attacks."

"It's disappointing that President Obama has lowered the discourse of this important debate with false personal attacks," he said in a statement.

It's not personal, of course.

Obama carried his party's primary in South Carolina last year.

But he lost the Palmetto State in the general.

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