I can hear it now (forgive me Edward R.)

Ted, Sarah, Michelle, Rush, Eric, Rand and a gaggle of gerrymandered minions of the let's-starve-the-beast gang needed an idea. A big idea. A killer idea. And fast.

The SEQUESTER wasn't working out exactly as they'd hoped. Nearly all those laid-off folks who weren't getting paid any more turned out to be voters with bills to pay . . . or folks depending on those payments . . . or both . . . or worse.

Worse, still Obama's numbers were rising . . . and theirs weren't. And a distressingly persistent if slow improvement in the economy wasn't really helping the cause.

Then . . . from a far right corner of a T-shaped table piled so high with empty pizza boxes Sarah could barely see Russia . . . a thought . . . an idea . . . a shout was heard!

SHUT . . . IT . . . DOWN!!!

"The keg?" some staffer muttered. "No! The government! The Government! THE GOVERNMENT!" the cry crept . . . right around the table as the mad brilliance of Texas Ted Talk slowly but steadily sank in.

"We can shut down the government and blame it on . . . well . . . blame it on . . . who . . . or what?" "OBAMACARE!" screamed he . . . for what seemed like 21 straight hours.

"You have got to be kidding," some snotty staffer muttered sotto voce. "We already tried that. It killed us at the polls and ruined Newt's marriage. People may not like government . . . but they sure like a lot of what it does."

"OBAMACARE!" Ted shouted, apparently at the wall.

"Even people who don't like government LIKE Obamacare," the staffer replied. "And those who don't like the IDEA of it like bits and pieces of it: like keeping their kids on their insurance plans until they're 26 or making sure people with pre-existing conditions can get coverage."

"We can fix that," Ted muttered. "How?" the staffer asked. "OBAMACARE," Ted shouted again, for no apparent reason.

"We can lie," one of the more pragmatic staffers added. "Let's tell 'em that EVERYONE will face HUGE premium increases."

"But EVERYONE isn't insured," someone noted just to be perverse. "Isn't that sort of the point of Obamacare?"

"OBAMACARE" Ted shouted, just for grins.

"Think about it!" the staffer continued. "There are only . . . what . . . 40 million uninsured . . . they're disproportionately poor . . . they don't vote much . . . and, good Lord, lots of them are . . . well, . . . women."

"We'll just prove that when EVERYONE has insurance, all those folks WITH insurance will ALL pay more for it."

"Huh?" someone said. "How will we prove THAT?" some staffer translated helpfully.

"Easy. Find out what young healthy people, or even better, young, healthy MEN will have to pay . . . and compare THAT to what everyone else will be paying.

"And just to play with their heads a little," the wily staffer added, "we'll include in the bad pool all those folks who couldn't get any insurance at all in the bad old days. That will REALLY skew the numbers."

"OBAMACARE" Ted shouted.

"And, of course we won't count the subsidies many of the less-well-off will receive," the staffer continued.

"OBAMACARE" Ted shouted at random. "AMERICAN PEOPLE."

"Brilliant!" the rest roared. "Lies, Damned Lies . . . and best of all, BAD STATISTICS."

"AND we have a loophole to play with," an Alaskan noted helpfully. "MEDICAID!"

"We don't have to expand it! After all, adding all those folks to the rolls only makes our ENEMIES look good and only helps the . . . excuse the expression . . . POOR."

"Sure, some, like you guys in Virginia, will just have to say no to getting $22 billion or so of your own tax dollars back from the Feds to finance the deal."

"But what the hey, why NOT give up a program that would cost you nothing in year one, a pittance thereafter, and save the lives and health of tens of thousands of POOR Virginians?"

"And face it, who REALLY cares? You're not poor, I'm not poor, and the poor don't like either of us."

"OBAMACARE" Ted shouted. "AMERICAN PEOPLE. SICK SICK SICK"

"Speaking of sick, did you know Medicaid patients tend to be sicker than uninsured people," someone from Fox News added helpfully.

"Well, duh," some staffer muttered. "Wouldn't poor people who were sick be more likely to sign up for Medicaid than poor people who were well?"

"Shaddup," said one of the Teddies, now on a roll on Cruz control. "If we do this RIGHT we can not only shut down OUR government . . . we can threaten the economy of the ENTIRE WORLD . . . and . . . if we're lucky . . . shut down LOTS of governments.

"RIGHT!" the T-square shouted. "We can threaten not to raise the DEBT CEILING! It will be like putting a gun to Obama's head . . . not to mention all those Kenyans in the Senate. They wouldn't DARE tell us no."

"And when we're done," someone added helpfully, "EVERYONE will love us. What could possibly go wrong?"

"But what will the Fox say?" Ted asked, knowing what's good for what ails you.

"Obamacare?" someone suggested.

With that, they all trooped off to the house of the Prince of Orange to truly make his day.

"OBAMACARE" Ted shouted.