Comments on: Blue Dogs Rake in Cash While Slowing Obama Agenda

By: IJB

IJB — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:24:57 +0000

If unemployment is still over 10% by, say, June of 2010, nothing will save the Dems. *Nothing.*

By: kyle8

kyle8 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:28:56 +0000

If the economy is as bad as I believe it will be, being a blue dog and having money will not save them, at least a lot of them.

By: eliminatedebt

eliminatedebt — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:56:00 +0000

Its not the liberal districts GOP is going to win in. Its going to be the conservative ones that have Blue representation that the GOP needs. If these boys are raising excessive amounts of money just from being antagonists now and surrendering later after the money is pocketed… they are well off.

If the GOP is to have a 20+ landslide in 2010, it would have to come from the Blue Dog districts. Oh Pelosi and her spending will continue. Rahm was smart, I bet he planned for this as a long term goal.

By: djemi

djemi — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:33:46 +0000

But and I hate that word, SWMBO uses it alot, must be something about lefties.
Anyway no matter how bad the economy gets and its going to get a lot worse, the super lefties are safe in their seats, its the purple dems that are up for grabs and if they can play the NObama agenda card with all that money and somehow get re elected even with a reduced margin the Super Lefties in the leadership will just use that “election mandate” stick to kick the BO agenda back into gear.
I don’t think its going to happen that way, it’s just a concern I have.
IMHO with the Bad economy the Republicans may re take the house and reduce the dems majority in the Senete, thus pushing the super lefties from the leadership of the Dems, not that I care.

By: IJB

IJB — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:31:47 +0000

Until we get away from health insurance covering everything, we’ll never get out of this mess.

All regular Dr’s check-ups, temporary medications, and even non-major injuries (e.g. getting a cast) need to be paid directly by most people (and, yes, that will likely necessitate HSAs) and not the insurance industry. We need to get away from this co-pay nonsense.

Once medical insurance is scaled back to mostly ‘catastrophic coverage’, a la auto insurance, medical costs will likely start snapping back into like based on market forces.

The problem with healthcare is that far too much of it has been insulated from market forces for too long…

By: scottbomb

scottbomb — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:31:46 +0000

1. Medicaid is already available for poor, disabled people but finding a doctor that’s accepting new patients is nearly impossible in some cities because Medicaid doesn’t pay worth a hill of beans. These payments can be improved.

2. Means-test Medicare and Social Security. Two birds, one stone. There’s no reason why we should be forced to subsidize the medical care and retirement of millionaires.

3. Remove barriers to buying health insurance across state lines. Allow small businesses to get together and buy group policies.

4. Reform tort law to remove the ability of juries to award outrageous punitive damages. This would have to be done at the state level.

Done!

By: briann

briann — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:00:11 +0000

They are creating value and the market is rewarding them. This is how it should be.

-Bri

By: Brian Faughnan

Brian Faughnan — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:57:19 +0000

To some extent, this is a zero-sum game: the more that Democrats buck their party’s agenda, the likelier they are to survive next year. If this is what happens, and the net effect is to preserve a Democrat majority while blocking the worst excesses of Obamism, then that’s what happens.

Of course, the way the economy is going, the likely outcome is both a check on the Obama agenda and sweeping Democrat losses in 2010. So we may have to console ourselves with that.

By: djemi

djemi — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:15:34 +0000

Yes it is good news that the ‘blue dogs’ seem to be slowing down the BO agenda but they are still Dems so instead of a 10lb bag of (site rules) we get a 5lb bag. Now most of these ‘blue dogs’ are from conservative district, right? So how is it good news that they happen to be raising more money than before, doesn’t that just make it harder for ture conservatives to take those seats back, just saying.

By: mdredstater

mdredstater — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:12:56 +0000

for compromise on any component of the Obama agenda. Cap-and-tax and Obama-care need to be defeated in their entirety because the passage of any element of the bills that are up for vote assaults the free market and the private lives of citizens.