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Late last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released more details of its investigation into the secret backroom deals that gave birth to ObamaCare.  A pile of emails from senior White House officials to pharmaceutical industry bigwigs reveal that all of President Obama’s public anger at greedy drug companies was actually part of what professional wrestlers call “kayfabe” – a choreographed act designed to create drama and tension.

Obama and those pharmaceutical executives stayed in character as adversaries to fool the public, while behind closed doors, they were inking lucrative deals to put tax money into the industry’s pockets, in exchange for vital industry support for ObamaCare.  This perpetuated the vital illusion that Obama was a brave crusader against drug company greed, at the same time he was privately offering various incentives to corporate honchos, to make certain they would fall into line and embrace ObamaCare at the pivotal moment.

The President was publicly denouncing efforts by pharmaceutical “special interests” to stymie his great reform efforts, while privately assuring PhRMA, the industry’s lobbying group, they would have unrivaled access to ObamaCare commissars, granting them valuable input into the crafting of that legendary legislative disaster.

Of particular interest is an email sent out by top PhRMA lobbyist Bryant Hall, on the eve of a fiery Obama speech in which he thundered that it was time for drug companies to “pay their fair share.”  As Hall assured his contacts, “Here’s the stuff.  Background is that the Pres’s words are harmless.  He knows personally about our deal and is pushing no agenda.”

Another White House email assured drug lobbyists that Rahm Emanuel would get together with White House Office of Health Reform Director Nandy-Ann DeParle to “make it clear that PhRMA needs a direct line of communication, separate and apart from any other coalition.”  All pigs feeding at the government trough are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others.

This secret relationship did have its rocky moments, and the White House did not hesitate to deliver some quiet threats to finicky drug lobbyists.  In May 2009, when PhRMA expressed some reluctance to get on board with the President’s agenda, they were explicitly told that the Administration would publicly vilify them at a major press conference unless they fell into line.  Hall warned his fellow lobbyists in an email, “We need to sign it.  [Then-White House Press Secretary] Robert Gibbs is going to call PhRMA out specifically by name as an outlier at the press conference if we do not.  Rahm is already furious.  The ire will be turned on us.”

In June 2009, PhRMA lobbyists were told that ObamaCare might just include two “poison pills” that could have cost them billions of dollars: a rebate of pharmaceutical costs for Medicare Part D enrollees, and the elimination of tax deductions for direct-to-consumer drug advertising.  They were told the President would use his weekly radio address to call for a full rebate of Medicare Part D, which Hall construed as “punishing us for being forward leaning.”  A week later, PhRMA wrote White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina to say they were ready to make a deal.

The drug industry ended up making concessions that were worth about $80 billion toward the cost of ObamaCare over the next 10 years, and they ran a multi-million dollar ad campaign in support of the President’s legislation.  In return, they were promised protection from price controls, guaranteed income thanks to ObamaCare’s mandates, and favorable language against drug importation.  The latter was explicitly presented as a reward for PhRMA’s good behavior.  Hall said in an email that he had spoken with Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle, and she told him the White House “is opposing import on this bill, specifically linking to our willingness to be cooperative on [health care reform].”

Hall made it clear that loose lips would sink this crony capitalist ship in a subsequent email: “They have something pretty nice cooked up on importation.  But they want to keep it really quiet.”  In the end, PhRMA support for ObamaCare was portrayed as a deal they reached with the Senate Finance Committee, with the White House’s heavy-handed involvement discreetly concealed from the public.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee concludes that its review of the tactics used by the White House “identified a potent combination of policy threats and private reassurances that industry would be protected against policies it disliked in exchange for support of the legislation and acceptance of other policies.  Taken together, these findings help illuminate a previously opaque series of agreements that resulted in a fundamental reshaping of our nation’s health care system.”

This all stands in very unpleasant contrast to Obama’s promises of transparency and accountability.  In some cases, particularly the drug importation issue, the White House’s backroom deals with Big Pharma run directly counter to his campaign rhetoric.

But it’s also important to remember that this sort of thing is standard operating procedure for Obama-style Big Government corporatism.  ObamaCare isn’t about taxing the public to finance government-provided benefits – that’s coming next, after ObamaCare fails, and the Left begins urging single-payer socialized medicine.  Instead, this is a scheme to preserve the rudiments of a private sector, which marches to a tune called by Big Government.

Of course the government’s “partners” must have some input into the process, and it must be kept from public view.  The junior partners in this arrangement cannot be given mandates that would prove instantly fatal to their business model.  At the same time, they must occasionally be reminded that Big Government is the boss, and has acquired vast powers it can use to punish them.  Private sector moguls are assisting in the creation of powers that will quickly grow beyond their ability to control.  Their willing, enthusiastic cooperation will become increasingly less necessary.  More government means more compulsion, and the end product of compulsion is obedience.

In the years to come, Big Pharma might be surprised to see how much of Big Government’s bulk comes pouring through the door they have opened, as they discover much of their complex deal with the Obama Administration turns out to have been written in pencil.

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“Faith is the reason I switched parties.”

So said Jo Ann Nardelli when my office contacted her last week to talk to her about why she left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. Nardelli is a former Pennsylvania State Democratic Party Committeewoman and former president of the Blair County Federation of Democratic Women.

Nardelli said she had felt a “distancing from the party” over the past six months to a year as President Obama took the party leftward and began pandering more and more to left-wing special interests.

Candidate Obama promised unity and pledged post-partisanship. But President Obama has become the most divisive politician in recent history, remarkably eager both to attack—his political enemies, the Catholic Church, critical news outlets, other branches of government—and to pander—to environmentalists, gays, public employee unions, feminists, abortion groups and others.

But Nardelli’s switch shows that as Obama’s slice and dice campaign continues, he risks taking significant slices out of his own Democratic Party.

The last straw, Nardelli said, came on Sunday, May 6, when, before heading off to mass, she and her husband watched Vice President Joe Biden on Meet the Press.

Nardelli calls Biden “a man of deep Catholic faith whose Irish Catholic ways remind me very much of my own father of Italian Catholic background.” She said she felt sick when she heard Biden announce his support for same-sex marriage.

She knew where things were headed. Once the president came out for same-sex marriage, it would lead to a change in the party platform and every Democrat would be forced to comply. “Therefore, I knew I had to resign my positions, dissolve my affiliations, take a stand and change to the Republican Party,” she said.

Obama’s same-sex marriage announcement may have helped him with gay-rights groups—he quickly raised more than $15 million off the decision—but it has hurt him among people like Nardelli, a practicing Catholic who’s been a registered Democrat for more than 40 years.

Nardelli’s not alone. With the HHS “contraceptive mandate,” Obama has made a political calculation that appealing to secular and liberal female voters is more important than the constitutional rights of faithful Catholics.

A subsequent “accommodation” did little to quell the anger that followed. It got Obama’s liberal Catholic allies back on board. But now the administration is being sued by dozens of Catholic and other religious entities for breach of First Amendment rights.

Polls suggest Obama’s attacks have hurt him. Obama enjoyed a 20-point advantage against Romney among women in the early spring. Now Obama and Romney are running even among them.

Several recent polls find Obama sliding among Catholic voters. Obama won Catholics by nine points in 2008. And he was ahead by nine points in early March, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

In its most recent poll, Pew found that 47 percent of Catholic voters would vote for Obama, while 52 percent would vote for Romney. If that margin were to hold on Election Day, it would mark a swing of 18 million voters away from Obama—enough for him to lose the election.

Obama’s fundamental problem is that he’s out of touch with ordinary Americans. You’ll remember that part of the wisdom in Obama selecting Joe Biden for the number two slot was that Biden’s Catholic, working class roots would help Obama with those voters.

It may have helped him marginally in 2008. But with his attacks on religious conscience, with his job-killing economic and nonsensical environmental policies, Obama has made it clear who matters to him, narrow ideological constituencies that he hopes will donate enough money to his campaign to get him re-elected. To that end, Planned Parenthood endorsed Obama last week with a $1.4 million ad buy.

Former Alabama Democratic Representative Artur Davis recently switched parties too. The former Obama ally has moved to Virginia and recently wrote on a blog, “If I were to run again, it would be as a Republican.”

Davis, who is black, blamed Obama’s divisiveness, particularly on racial issues, for his change. “Frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country,” he wrote. “I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured.”

Nardelli and Davis aren’t the only Democrats having a change of heart. Recently, 42 percent of voters in Kentucky voted “uncommitted” on their ballots in the Democratic presidential primary. In Arkansas an obscure lawyer named John Wolfe got 42 percent of the primary vote.

In West Virginia a federal inmate garnered more than 40 percent of the vote, and in Oklahoma pro-life activist Randall Terry got 18 percent of the vote.

Echoing Ronald Reagan, Nardelli insists “I did not leave the Party, the Party left me!” That sentiment is no doubt shared by many other moderate and working class Democrats. In five months, we’ll know just how many.

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