I hope they have the spine or their electoral gains will evaporate. The GOP must shut down the Senate starting early next week. Not just on healthcare, but everything. Grind it to a halt. This is from Senate insiders with knowledge of the battle to come in the next couple of weeks. As one strategist emailed me:
…the only viable strategy I can see is for the Republicans to begin the process of shutting down the U.S. Senate until the Democrats agree to MOVE ON — move off healthcare until the 112th Congress convenes.
The Democrats are ready to rip off the band-aid:
The advice went out to freshman and sophomore House Democrats, blunt talk to help them through a tricky vote on health reform.
“At this point, we have to just rip the band-aid off and have a vote — up or down; yes or no?” the memo said. “Things like reconciliation and what the rules committee does is INSIDE BASEBALL.”
As Pelosi is now looking for Senate assurances before the House healthcare vote, it is clear that not only the House but the Senate as well requires our immediate attention:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday said she will need “certain assurances” from Senate Democrats before the House votes on healthcare reform as early as next week.
Pelosi did not say what those assurances would be, but acknowledged that extracting them would be necessary to counter lingering concerns from within her caucus that the Senate will not be able to pass a reconciliation bill.
“With reconciliation, a simple majority, a constitutional majority, I think members are much more comfortable with the fact that this reconciliation will happen,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. “Nonetheless, there are certain assurances that they want, and that we will get from [Senate Democrats] before I ask them to take the vote.”
The Democrats have lost the Mandate from Heaven they once enjoyed and are attempting to literally enact a bill that will destroy our healthcare system, raise taxes, stifle economic growth during a deep recession, and nationalize over 1/6 of our economy. We should not take this lying down. Neither should GOP members of Congress. This was never about Stupak or abortion. Any government takeover of healthcare will result in the use of taxpayer dollars at some point in the future to federally fund abortions. A vote to improve ObamaCare with any Stupak-like language is a vote for ObamaCare. But the real reality is at this time it just does not matter. What matters now is derailing this bill.
The Senate GOP should not make us go through a repeat of the embarrassing display of spineless behavior displayed last year. Next week shut down the Senate. We are counting on you.
It’s time to go into campaign mode and draw this out until the Easter recess. No more need to think about parliamentarian tricks. Such worries have no impact whatsoever on the current situation. After the Senate GOP began to obstruct is exactly the time when they began to win over the electorate.
Nobody wants this bill, so I repeat the GOP must stand up and shut down the Senate. Regardless of what the legislation is, shut down the Senate. Don’t wait for healthcare abortion side bills and reconciliation to come barreling down on your heads and then obstruct. Start doing it now and don’t stop until Senator Reid promises to drop ObamaCare until the following Congress. There is no excuse for waiting and the American people are counting on the Senate GOP to stand up for us.
The Democrats lack a mandate on healthcare. This issue must dominate every nook and cranny of network and cable news, in every blog, and in every opinion piece and editorial. Take the healthcare dominance of the news cycle now and increase it exponentially. Make this a referendum on the Democratic party and its contempt for the governed.
Obstruct. Obstruct. Obstruct.
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JadedByPolitics (Diary) Sunday, March 14th at 9:02AM EST (link)SHUT IT DOWN for the rest of the year if these STUPID, PATHETIC Democrats do not STAND DOWN on this horror of a bill that they know full well the American public does NOT WANT!
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It's a shame McConnell and company have no cajones
bk (Diary) Sunday, March 14th at 9:13AM EST (link)They should get all 41 GOP Senators to sign a letter saying that if they violate the Senate in this way, they hope Obama doesn’t mind operating next year with a Supreme Court of 8 justices after Stevens retires. And by the way, and his other judicial nominations are dead too.
The GOP leaders are just clueless and spineless.
ColdWarrior (Diary) Sunday, March 14th at 8:04PM EST (link)Actually, every GOP senator has been cowardly. Any one of them could have tied the Senate in knots for months but they never tried. Remember Bunning’s antic a week or two ago? Even he threw in the towel.
Any of them could have been doing this sort of stuff according to the Standing Senate Rules ON THEIR OWN whether McConnell and Kyl liked it or, but NONE had the courage to do so. Kyl lied to me about it in front of a group, insisting the GOP senators employed EVERY POSSIBLE DELAYING TACTIC UNDER THE RULES. Hogwash. McConnell pronouced his strategy was to not oppose the bill but add amendments to it and then, when it passed, use it as a basis to gain seats in November 2010. How pathetic.
But why blame them? The blame really belongs with US. We elected these clowns. We conservatives, through decades of allowing the playing field to be peopled by “professional politicians,” allowed our government to be run by a bunch of folks who DO NOT think of themselves as public servants fighting to preserve our rights, but rather just to dole out money to their pet special interests. Look at McConnell’s bio. Been in government his entire life. Look at Kyl’s. First the House, now the Senate. Same with McCain. Same with most of them. Decade after decade we return these spineless clowns (Graham, anyone?) to help the Socialists/Progressives/Commies in the Debtocrat Party lord it over us.
As I’ve been saying, unless we conservatives unite in the Republican Party voting ranks itself, and present credible threats to the re-election chances of “conservatives” like McCain, for example, nothing will change. That’s why I try to recruit conservatives to become PCs.
(By the way, McCain is now flooding the Arizona broadcast and cable television outlets with ads. GOOD. That means it’s more of his “Friends of John McCain” money he can’t send to other RINOs around the country.)
Thank you.
ColdWarrior
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The sadest part ColdWarrior
Scope (Diary) Sunday, March 14th at 8:42PM EST (link)is the Kyl’s, the McConnell’s, the McCain’s and the Gramnesty’s are the one’s out there with the biggest voices for the Republican Party. I love DeMint, but, even he seems to be closing ranks’s when he talked very nicely about Gramnesty. His excuse to Beck was that he has been a great proponent against Obamacare. Gramnesty right now is helping to write “bipartisan legislation for Cap and Trade, and, illegal amnesty. After Obamacare, they have to be the most radical left wing ideas for legislation since Woodrow Wilson. These are unfortunately some of the first names thought of when you think Republican. Where the freak are the rest of the Republican Senators? I’ll bet big bucks that most don’t know of any other Republican names of Senators. Oh, I forgot to mention Snowe and Collins.
I was so PO’d at Beck for saying that there is no difference between R’s and D’s, and, for the most part, the party platforms are wildly different. Problem is, our own have been reading from the Progressive playbook, and, bypassed the Republican playbook.
Scope: Remember the Pogo comic strip?
ColdWarrior (Diary) Sunday, March 14th at 9:31PM EST (link)“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” As I’ve said, we’ve got ourselves to blame. I’m guilty as charged. For too many years those of us who should have been involved in party politics “let George do it.” Me included. I thought working on a campaign here and there, sending money (foolishly) to the RNC to get the nice embossed “Sustaining Member” or whatever card, sending money to candidates, was enough.
No more. I no longer trust anybody but me, myself and I to get involved. I am no longer willing to trust others to take my place on the real ball field politics — party politics. I can’t do much more right now than run for precinct committeeman (in addition, I ran for, and won, a county-wide “at large” position on the county GOP Executive Guidance Committee), but I can at least do that. So I can at least have some effect on who gets to “lead” the Party — because only precinct committeemen get to vote for the Party leaders. And so I can better vet the Republican primary candidates. And have a vote on who gets to fill any state legislative seats that become open due to a mid-term vacancy (ONLY elected PCs get to vote for the nominees to fill the vacant seats, not “mere” registered Republicans — that’s the way it works here in AZ).
Conservatives have the numbers in this “center right” country. We conservatives just don’t seem to have the time to get involved. Most everyone seems to have an excuse. When I’m asked, “How much time does it take to be a PC?” I reply, “That’s the wrong question. The question should be, ‘How many hours a month of your time is your country worth to you and your kids?’”
I’m not willing to cross my fingers and hope that enough “Georges will do it.” I wish more conservatives would thnk the same way.
Thank you.
ColdWarrior
No More Scozzafavas!
Become a Republican precinct committeeman. NOW!
In 2012, will YOU become a “voting member” of the Republican Party in your precinct?
Where it all started. Twitter @kaltkrieger
Unified Patriots.
Learn how to GOTV at The Concord Project and at Procinct and