Representative John Boccieri, Democrat of Ohio, whose vote on major health care legislation could be crucial to the outcome, will not be attending President Obama’s health care rally on Monday in Strongsville, Ohio, not far from Mr. Boccieri’s own district, a spokeswoman said.
March 15 (Bloomberg) — It is looking more and more like the Democratic Party’s idea of health-care reform will be enacted, notwithstanding the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the opposition of the American people.
If the legislation does survive the gathering political storm, then it will present historians with a fascinating puzzle. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton tried to enact universal health care, and his failure wiped out the Democratic Party in the next election. In 2010, history may show, President Barack Obama won passage of health-care legislation, and his success wiped out the Democratic Party in the next election, if not beyond.
Voters in key congressional districts are clear in their opposition to what they have seen, read and heard on health-care reform. That’s one of the findings of a survey that will be released today by the Polling Company on behalf of Independent Women’s Voice. The survey consisted of 1,200 registered voters in 35 districts represented by members who could determine the outcome of the health-care debate. Twenty of those members voted for the House bill in November but now may be reconsidering. Fifteen voted against the bill but are under tremendous pressure to change their vote.
For close to a decade now, Democrats have been arguing with each other about what kind of country this is, and what kind of party they should be. On one side stands a group of politicians, consultants and wonks who believe that America is, at its core, a pretty conservative place. These Democrats form something of a political generation. In their youth, they saw their party move left during Vietnam and get booted from power in 1968. Then they saw George McGovern, the most left-wing major party presidential candidate of the twentieth century, lose 49 states. Then they saw Jimmy Carter’s presidency destroyed in part because he looked weak during the Iran hostage crisis. Then they saw Ronald Reagan, once considered as an unelectable right-wing nut, become the most popular president of their adult lives.
“If they pull off this crazy scenario they are putting together, they are going to destroy a lot of the comity in the House,” said Brian Darling, a congressional expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Even in the current, highly partisan atmosphere, it can get a lot worse.”
Obama’s latest version of his health care overhaul has attracted no Republican support, so Democrats will try to pass it with narrow House and Senate majorities.
The political commentariat doesn’t know what to make of those thousands of Americans who have spontaneously thronged to tea parties and town hall meetings to oppose the big government programs of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.
Some on the left attack them as fascists or racists, though evidence of that is sorely lacking. David Brooks in The New York Times compared them to the New Left campus radicals of the 1970s, which comes closer to reality but doesn’t quite ring true.
One shadow cabinet member put it to me rather well last week. “When Blair won in 1997, it was a full white wedding, with a huge national party and all of the trimmings.” And if the Conservatives win the general election in a few weeks? “Oh, that’ll be much more like a second marriage: no bunting, somewhere like Chelsea Register Office.”
I come before you a humbled man, dear reader, hat in hand and foot in mouth. For years, I have decried the Roe Decision as bad law with no solid precedence. I was wrong, and have learned the error of my way. Justice Blackmun was following a fine legal tradition when he delivered the much maligned opinion of the court.
What brought about this jurisprudential epiphany? As is often the case, it began with an innocent, only moderately related, conversation. I was involved in a conversation the topic of which was that Kansas Supreme Court Justice Carole Beier was a ridiculous excuse for a judge. Anytime you discuss corrupt, insane and or booze-addled judges, one name must come to mind - Judge Roy Bean. We were, and it did, but I was a little bit surprised when I was asked to explain exactly why Bean was a member of the incompetent judge Hall of Fame. (more…)
Hodge writes at a RedState diary entry:
Sam Brownback cannot be taken seriously while ex-banker Lynn Mitchelson remains a campaign co-chair.
Some questions for future Kansas Governor Sam Brownback:
RedState readers, I can explain to you the national banking crisis, in three words: Meet Lynn Mitchelson.
For 15 years, the ex-banker Lynn Mitchelson has been one of seven at-large elected trustees at Johnson County Community College. In large part because he is now unelectable, Mitchelson will permanently retire from public office in 2011.
Mitchelson once had a reputation in Kansas City as someone who could “fix banks.” Troubled banks would hire him as a temporary CEO, and, in theory, he would bring them back to health. But now that his record in elected office is widely known, I’ll be surprised if he is ever again hired by a bank. Why? Because he is directly responsible for much of lawlessness, failed cover-ups, and retaliation that has become commonplace at JCCC. The only thing more embarrassing than the corruption in which Mitchelson has participated, is that he has been so unsuccessful at carrying it out. I did not properly understand the phrase “the cover-up is worse than the crime,” until I had witnessed first-hand Mitchelson at work. Time and time again, Mitchelson’s actions have brought national embarrassment to this college, the largest college in Kansas.
I had not planned on writing about Mitchelson’s work, but today I’ve learned that JCCC leaders have made malicious, baseless legal threats directly to the top conservative news organization RedCounty.com, where I have written in detail about JCCC’s culture of corruption.
Inexplicably, the once-thought-to-be-conservative Sam Brownback months ago made Mitchelson a key part of Brownback’s 2010 campaign for governor, even though Mitchelson’s public record was already well-known. Brownback campaign manager David Kensinger - who apparently is under the illusion that Brownback can literally do whatever he wants, and that Brownback then will automatically receive the enthusiastic support of conservatives - doesn’t want to talk about it.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
Link.
As 120 million U.S. Census forms begin to arrive in mailboxes around the country, only 13% of Americans realize that it is illegal not to answer all of the Census questions.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of adults think
- incorrectly - that it is not against the law to not answer all the questions on the Census. Another 30% are not sure.
Link.
Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.
Appearing before Graham on ABC’s “This Week,” Axelrod had brushed off Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) criticism of healthcare reform, saying that Brown had voted for a very similar package for his home state of Massachusetts.
“Senator Brown comes from a state that has a healthcare plan that’s similar to the one we’re trying to enact here,” Axelrod said. “We’re just trying to give the rest of America the same opportunities that the people of Massachusetts have.”
That’s the answer from Marco Rubio when asked about his stunning rise to national prominence as a Republican challenger to a popular Republican officeholder in the key electoral state of Florida. Underlying this strange political season, says Mr. Rubio, is the president’s rapid uncloaking in office as anything but the postpartisan that voters thought they had elected.
Do Washington state Democrats have a death wish? That’s the question many locals must be asking after the Democrat-controlled Senate held hearings last Thursday, with little notice, packed with supporters for a new bill that would impose a statewide income tax.
They tried to sell the proposal as a populist measure. The tax would only apply to wealthy earners and it would allow the state government to reduce the sales tax. By bringing the bill up so late in the legislative session - business is supposed to be completed by this Thursday - the Dems were not seriously trying to pass the bill. So why bring it up at all?
The national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has long been intimidated by the Murdoch press in the obsessive manner of the campaign waged against the BBC. Funded directly by governments, the ABC has none of the nominal independence afforded by a licence fee. Last year, HarperCollins, owned by Murdoch, was awarded a lucrative “partnership” with ABC Books.
In 1983, there were 50 major corporations dominating the world’s media. By 2002, this had been reduced to nine. Rupert Murdoch says that eventually there will be three, including his own. If we accept this, media and information control will be the same, and we all shall be citizens of a murdochracy.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - After dropping out of the gubernatorial race last year, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is running for lieutenant governor.
Newsom’s announcement wasn’t a surprise-he filed papers Feb. 17 with the secretary of state, a necessary step to run again for a statewide office. But he had refused to confirm his candidacy until Friday’s deadline.
People didn’t always personally approve of him. But they believed he was on their side. Surely that helps explain why, even after Clinton was impeached, his job-approval rating remained in the 60s.
President Barack Obama would do well to take a page or two from Clinton’s playbook.
WASHINGTON — As the Afghanistan War intensifies — Marja, soon Kandahar, and the steady arrival of 30,000 new American troops — it has come to be seen as Obama’s war.
Not so. It’s become America’s war. When the former opposition party — habitually anti-war for the last four decades — adopts, reaffirms and escalates a war begun by the habitually hawkish other party, partisanship falls away, and the war becomes nationalized.
Hardly any Democrat running for Congress seems to want to talk about healthcare.
Of the 26 leading Democratic House candidates contacted by The Hill, only one would commit to voting for the Senate healthcare bill if and when it comes to the House floor.
By becoming for practical purposes the Washington leader of the tea party movement, DeMint also illustrates the degree to which energy on the right is now flowing to the capital and not from it. Congressional GOP leaders like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell derive their power from the inside, by virtue of the support of their colleagues. DeMint is the model now for how a rank-and-file member otherwise consigned to the back bench can be relevant without any title. It may not make him popular at the weekly caucus lunches, but it will get him on Sean Hannity’s show.
The partisan aftermath of the health care summit between President Obama and leaders of Congress maintains citizens’ dislike for politics and renews cries for more bipartisanship. While politics has apparently always sounded mean there is evidence that partisanship in Congress has increased. Congressional Quarterly calculates that in 2009 both House and Senate Democrats voted with their party 91 percent of the time on votes where the two parties were at odds. This is at, or near, record levels of unity for both chambers. House and Senate Republicans were nearly as unified. Times have changed since 1968, when only 51 percent of Senate Democrats backed their party on so-called party unity votes, or in 1970, when only 56 percent of Senate Republicans voted with their party position.
A video on YouTube asserted that the Coffee Party is not a group of leftists (a sure sign that it is). Another hint of it’s leftward tilt is a glowing interview conducted by St. Louis’ own Charles “I Smell Rocket Fumes” Jaco. Furthermore, the group’s website is assisted by www.democracyinaction.org, which says it offers, “a web-based tool that progressive organizations [may use] to send emails to Congress.” Liberal, leftist or progressive; however they want to label themselves, they are welcome to the debate.
Facing a monumental washout this November, House Democrats underwent an election year conversion this week and announced they’ll ban earmarks to for-profit entities.
Republicans promptly called their bluff and went all in.
