Peggy Noonan on Now for the Slaughter - Memo to future presidents: Never take the country down the road to Demon Pass.

Peggy Noonan notes in The Wall Street Journal that the so-called Slaughter rule, alternatively known as "deem and pass," which would avoid a straight up-or-down House vote on the Senate health reform bill, sounds like "demon pass." She writes:

And so it ends, with a health-care vote expected this weekend. I wonder at what point the administration will realize it wasn't worth it—worth the discord, worth the diminution in popularity and prestige, worth the deepening of the great divide. What has been lost is so vivid, what has been gained so amorphous, blurry and likely illusory. Memo to future presidents: Never stake your entire survival on the painful passing of a bad bill. Never take the country down the road to Demon Pass.