Right: Angry Obama Exploited Kennedy, Failed to Compromise

Conservative commentators were, predictably, less than impressed with the president's big speech on health care reform last night. Here’s what they’re saying:

• Obama’s speech “was 40 minutes of boilerplate followed by a socko, emotional finish exploiting the death of Sen. Teddy Kennedy,” Fred Barnes writes in the Weekly Standard. But he still didn’t explain how he intends to pay for it, and that’s his big problem.

• Washington has destroyed the confident, campaign-trail Obama, writes Tucker Carlson on the Daily Beast. Last night “Obama sounded like an embattled second-termer with a 35% approval rating.” He railed against imaginary foes, “a man on his way to bitterness.”
• But to Karl Rove, he sounded like a man “planning to jam through a bill without compromise.” He’s asking congressional Democrats to take a big bet on something the public doesn't like, he writes in the Wall Street Journal, and they’re going to go down in flames for it.

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