Politics – Page 230 – Shall Not Be Questioned

That Didn’t Take Long

Before Nancy Pelosi even had the votes counted, someone created a Facebook group to dump Patrick Murphy. I signed up. The Democrats seem to think this area is true blue, but only four years ago, 3 out of the 4 congressional districts representing the Philadelphia suburbs were held by the GOP. Murphy ran as a Blue Dog, sells himself as a Blue Dog, but is really an unrepentant leftist. Far too liberal for Bucks County. You’d be hard pressed to get a deep red conservative elected in my district, but I think the GOP could capture the middle with the right message against Murphy.

In 2008, the GOP geared up Tom Manion to run on Iraq as an issue, but by the time the election rolled around everyone cared bout the economy. The GOP needs to hit Murphy on the topics he’s vulnerable. He won’t be able to count on Obama’s coattails in 2010, and Murphy has done plenty of offend our district, if someone will only tell them. I sincerely hope the GOP mounts a serious challenge to Murphy in 2010. This is probably our best chance to unseat him.

Reading the Bill

Tom Coburn is threatening to read the Health Care Bill before the Senate. I’d be tempted to cheer him on, but what have we come to when reading the bill is considered a threat?

“Did you hear? Coburn is going to read the bill?”

“Read the bill? Dear God! That’ll ruin everything!”

“Surely there’s got to be a way to stop him?”

We are so screwed.

Spoiling

Eric is a little understandably frustrated the GOP could have had Pelosi’s health care bill dead as a doornail if they had just not floated the Stupak Amendment to restrict abortion coverage in the bill. By voting for Stupak, the GOP allowed the Dems to pick up a number of key votes they needed in order to pass. I also wonder whether Stupak was strategically smart for the purpose of stopping Pelosicare, but I’m also aware that it’s not a guarantee the bill would have been stopped, and that the GOP has to consider what pro-life voters are going to think.

It’s a tough position for the GOP to be in. Imagine if there had been an assault weapons ban attached to the health care bill? Would we have forgiven the GOP for just letting it happen? Probably not. The GOP did what it had to do to placate an important constituency that votes in large numbers. I’m sympathetic to arguments that they could have used the abortion issue to kill health care entirely, possibly by voting “present” on the bill. But can you imagine the backlash if that had happened, and Pelosi managed to pick up the votes for passage anyway? Pelosi barely passed this bill, but I wouldn’t make the mistake of believing she didn’t have several other Blue Dog Dems who were willing to switch their votes to yes if needed. She got as many votes as she needed to pass, and then let the other Blue Dogs save their seats by voting no.

I am with Eric on the abortion issue, as it does not rank that high on my list of issues, and I don’t advocate it being illegal. But I’m also aware it’s a powerful issue for driving votes. While neither Bitter nor I are anti-abortion activists, my anti-gun Congressman, Patrick Murphy, voted in favor of Pelosicare and against the Stupak Amendment, while claiming to be a good Catholic. Come election time, I will have no compunction about going around to the catholic churches in the neighborhoods during mass, and doing lit drops to let people know how Murphy voted.Â Any chair in a bar fight.

Health Care Passes House

Pelosi barely did it. Only one Republican voted for it. We have to stop this in the Senate now.

Pretty Good Ad

The GOP is running a pretty good ad against Pelosicare. Interesting though, it’s not really an exaggeration. Loading her bill in Safari made me have to restart, after it choked on the sheer size of it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1wCI1PGoiI[/youtube]

Dirty Jobs

Political Math takes a look at the jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus.

Sam Rohrer Gearing up for Guv Run

Just received this via e-mail:

I want to personally invite you to a special Townhall onÂ Tuesday, November 17 at theÂ Spring Township Fire Department, 2301 Monroe Avenue in West Lawn, PA.Â Iâ€™m organizing this forum to announce the decision on the race for governor, and begin a statewide conversation about the challenges and real opportunities facing Pennsylvania.

I’m going to guess that’s going to be an announcement that he’s running. I like Representative Rohrer, but as I’ve said, it’s without historical precedent for a state rep to make the leap to Governor. He’s a champion of limited government, and for that I admire him, but he’s going up against Attorney General Tom Corbett, who’s a proven winner in a statewide race, and Jim Gerlach, who is a U.S. Congressman, and has proven repeatedly he can win very tough elections in a swing district.

I’d much rather support Sam Rohrer for a higher office like State Senator, Auditor General, or some other state wide office. I suspect Rep. Rohrer is just trying to get his name out there, and get some of his ideas into the debate. That’s good. I will lend support to his candidacy. But it’s quite a long shot, and at the end of the day we can’t afford another 8 years of the same kind of things we’ve seen with Governor Ed.

Getting Ahead of Ourselves

Cemetery reports that some Garden State Gunnies are getting all excited about the prospects of CCW since the election of Chris Christie. Three words, “ain’t gonna happen.” The fact of the matter is, no matter what Steve Lonegan told New Jersey gun owners in the primary, there is no support in the Assembly or Senate to pass a shall-issue bill. Gun owners would be mistaken to look towards Chris Christie as their savior, or knight in shining armor. He’s not. He is your star goalie. His job is merely to keep the opposing team from scoring goals until you can get your team back in the game. It is not realistic to expect anything more from him.

In short, there’s a lot of work to do in the Garden State. You got rid of one anti-gun Assemblyman in Fred Madden’s district and replaced him with a pro-gunner. You have to keep doing that, until you have the votes to expect more from Chris Christie. Until then, you can’t expect him to put his political capital on the line for a fight he’s not going to win. Understand what Christie is. Understand his role. And work on getting your team back in the game.

Government Healthcare

Just remember when the government wants to control your healthcare what hoops we now have to jump through to treat a freakin’ cold.

As recently as my college years, I was able to go buy a few pills to pop to ease congestion without dealing with people – except for the cashier. Today, I passed on any pill because I didn’t want to deal with people. (Thanks to self-checkout, dealing with people while sick is entirely optional now.) I also can’t easily see what’s actually in stock since all of the boxes are out of my sight.

Instead, I picked up some cough syrup recommended by my mom who has the same symptoms. Little did I know that even just buying cough syrup that is out on the shelf and going through the self-checkout, I would still have to interact with a cashier. Apparently cough syrup is now age-restricted. Yes, I had to show ID to buy cough syrup.

This is over-the-counter crap that I just want to ease my symptoms, and now government ID is required to buy it. But under Pelosi’s ideal healthcare bill, no such ID would be required to get public healthcare.

How long will it be before I have to show ID to buy my Puffs Plus with Lotion so I don’t have such a raw nose?

A Coalition I Can Believe In

Megan McArdle talks about how Republicans need to keep its coalition together:

As long as social issues dominate the Republican Party, they will continue losing their north–I had a lot of relatives who at least considered voting for Obama.Â Ironically, I wonder if the tea parties won’t help bring the two wings of the Republican party together:Â guns and lower government spending are the two things all members can agree on.Â But if the south wants to keep its northern Republicans–and the congressional seats that come with them–it’s going to have to back off trying to make the northern party look like a miniature version of itself.

Having grown up in a heavily Republican political culture in the northeast, she’s right about this. The great genius of Bill Clinton was the realization that by capturing a few important Republican economic issues, and making the switch to fighting culture wars, he could split the Republican Party by wedging apart the coalition. A lot of people in my area, including me, chose to become independent voters in the late 90s, early 00s because we did not like the direction the Republican Party was headed in. George W. Bush only made it worse. That drove a lot of people to the Democratic Camp.

Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, by running the country far to the left on economic issues, may very well be destroying what Bill Clinton accomplished in the 90s, and giving the GOP back their unifying issue.