I had to laugh when David Frum crawled out of his hole to once again blame republicans for the passage of the HCR Bill.

He really is true to form.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

What is it with his self-loathing?

As you all know this is the same guy that has said repeatedly that the republican party must move to the center if we are ever to regain credibility.

We must have a big tent.

I realize that I am not breaking any new news here but I did want to make note of it.

Is this the republicans Waterloo?

I don’t know and we won’t have that answer until after the coming elections in the fall.

Frum is right on one thing though…the republican leadership as we now know it MUST set up a plan to take the congress back. They cannot simply hope that the outrage that we are seeing today over this will stay at a feverish pitch as we get closer to election day 2010.

Some of the outrage will subside. They have to keep the fires stoked!

They have to keep hammering home the message, but the message MUST be coherent. It can’t be based out of fear, it must be made out of logic.

Can Steele get that message out?

Are Boehner and McConnell up to the challenge?

Even if we take back congress will republicans really be able to repeal this legislation?

Would they want to?

How many of our senior citizens, conservative or otherwise, will want the “doughnut-hole” repealed? Once people get to hang onto their money I highly doubt they will want to give it back.

One final thought.

A.B. Stoddard made an interesting observation this evening. When all was seemingly lost for the dems after the Mass. election, the dems got their voice and firmed up their message when BC/BS of CA attempted to raise their rates 39% in Calif.

What were they thinking?

Did they think that no one would notice? The press ran with it and the dems made hay out of it?

Look, I am all for the free-market but BC/BS got greedy by raising the rates in one of the most financially strapped states in the union.

And for their efforts they became the poster child of crappy piece of legislation. The Dems used that example to hammer their message home.

Full disclosure, I am not a doctor or a nurse but I do work in the medical field so my opinions on this bill are biased.

Please forgive the rant…

I have to laugh when listening to the various commentators talk about how republicans will remember the passage of this garbage this coming November.

Really?

The only thing I need to remember are the last two election cycles where the republicans got hammered. The same republicans that nominated a great American but horrible politician in John McCain. The same republicans that couldn’t stop spending, the same republicans that lost their way from their conservative values. That same batch of republicans was more concerned about being accepted by the dems, they didn’t want to be left out of the D.C. cocktail circuit.

They got their wish and in turn they got their pockets picked.

Elections have consequences…

We are seeing the results of that election today.

No decent person would say that all Americans should not have affordable health care. Of course they should, but what will we actually get with this piece of legislation? It may be affordable but the quality won’t be very good as many physicians will leave the profession in droves. Many more potential HCP’s will take a second look and and go on a different career path.

Those in favor of this bill will feel good today but when they walk into an over crowded E.R. for treatment or when they have a poor quality physician bungle their procedure then they too will understand that elections have consequences.

You get what you pay for.

There is a reason why many great physicians no longer take insurance or participate in medicare…they are good enough to demand cash up front.

I do not have faith in the current state of the republican party because most of them are RINO’s. They are more concerned about being in power then they are about keeping to the conservative values that they claim to embrace.

You know the republican party is a mess when the RNC is more concerned about staying to the center than staying to the RIGHT. We saw it in upstate New York and we are seeing it in Florida. These clowns like Steele and Boehner and McConnell don’t know how to lead, they only want to stay in power. They are addicted to Washington’s polluting ways.

They have no message, they have no plan. They have let the Republican party as we once knew run adrift and then run aground.

This bill is only the beginning. The dems will continue to chip away until they get what they wanted all along…the public option. What a sad day that will be.

I do not have faith that republicans will change. They are to worried about being nice, they don’t want to get down in the trenches and get dirty they dems do seemingly with ease.

Just once I would love some republican pundit melt down like that clown Lawrence O’Donnel does…then maybe it will wake these idiots up that they in the fight of their lives.

Taking back control of one or both houses is not enough, there has to be a fundamental change in the way they do the peoples business. They need to get a fire lit under their butts.

I am disgusted today…

/rant

I do not get all the Palin criticism from the right. I get that the left is going to attack her. I mean that is what they do when they are threatened.

I am not the most educated person here, I tend to go with my gut. However, I agree with Erick…Sarah Palin is done with elected politics so I am not sure why the right needs to criticize her for resigning as governor of Alaska. If she is not going to run again then there is no “risk” in her moving on.

The attacks on her family are an embarrassment to this country and how we conduct our elections. I could see this type of behavior in some third world cat hole but not the USA.

Two things stood out to me in the 8 months since she has been on the scene.

1-    Was the silence from the so-called women’s groups that champion women in their quest for creating their own identity and being self-sufficient. Those groups have lost all credibility (what little they had) with me.

2-    That Sarah Palin was not the best choice to be VP. She has a tremendous amount of energy and a lot of potential  and with a little more seasoning she would have been a great choice for higher office in the future. However, not in 2008 and probably not in 2012.

John McCain showed his ineptness by picking her…I don’t blame Palin for accepting. Heck, I would have jumped at the chance if I were asked. But McCain neutralized the experience card by picking Palin. On the flip side, Palin was the ONLY reason that I gave McCain a second look. I was prepared to sit the last election out on the national level. Palin brought the energy that McCain is missing.

I think Palin is going to use her popularity to spread the conservative word while making a few bucks in the process. Why not, she has bills to pay and she took the bullet for McCain and his idiotic “anonymous” campaign staff so why not line her pockets.

I am fine with her resigning. We all have our own paths to take. What surprises me is all the criticism that she is taking from the right. Especially without knowing what she is planning to do. She doesn’t even know what she wants to do other than protecting her family from further attacks. As much as I like her and as much as I want her to succeed she still lacks the experience needed for that higher office.

If she is/was our best hope at winning the country back then what does that say about our party? There isn’t a single republican that makes me want to jump for joy? None of them are as articulate or have the vision to move us out the disaster that we are experiencing right now.

I am not looking for the next Ronald Reagan…there was only one of those and we will never see another like him, but someone has to step up and stake their own claim by going back to the values that Reagan lived by. It is a different time now and whomever wants to carry the torch has to be able to be nimble on their feet while also being to blaze their own trail and adjust as curve balls are thrown your way. Too many RINO’s want to be liked and invited to the “in” functions instead of making the hard decisions. As long as people worry about their place instead of the people they represent we as conservatives will continue to be mis represented.

That is a bad place to be…

I wish her luck and hope she beats all those who have it out for her but I never saw her as a savior let alone the answer.

I caught this audio clip over at Liberals are Worthless

Unbelievable…

It looks like that this election, to a lot voters, was all about symbolism and nothing about substance. Not really surprising but when you listen to this clip it makes you bang your head against the wall.

Watch out what you wish for…

Caught this a little while ago.

Henry Rivera, a longtime radical leftist, lawyer and former FCC commissioner, is expected to lead the push to dismantle commercial talk radio that is favored by a number of Democratic Party senators. Rivera will play a pivotal role in preventing critics from having a public voice during Obama’s tenure in office.

Rivera, who resigned from the FCC nearly a quarter-century ago during the Reagan years, believes in a doctrine of “communications policy as a civil rights issue”.

His exit during the Reagan Administration paved the way for the Fairness Doctrine’s repeal when the late president appointed Patricia Diaz Dennis in 1986 to fill out the rest of Rivera’s term. Had this not occurred, talk radio as we know it today would not exist.

That gives Rivera’s new task a great deal of personal urgency: it’s a late-career, second chance opportunity to shut down opposition voices that have been allowed to flourish since his departure from the commission.

Well that didn’t long…ITS ON!

Maybe it’s just me but in watching Obama’s presser this afternoon he looked stressed out and a little gaunt in the face.

Could it be that now that he has the prize and seen all that he has in front of him that he is saying to himself “what did I get myself into?”. I could just imagine how the meeting with his economic team went now that it’s all on him. Couple that will all the markers that are already getting called in and its easy to see that Barry may already have some sleepless nights.

I could be wrong but its just a thought.

Welcome to the big leagues Barry! This isn’t some local community tea party that you’re used to.

As is always the case those who helped deliver the candidate his victory want some payback for their loyalty and hard work…

Hispanics delivered. Now the question is, how much can Latinos expect from Obama?

The president-elect has not made any firm commitments. During a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in September, he asked for their policy ideas and their votes and added, “When I’m president, I’ll be asking many of you to serve at every level of government.”

Cecilia Munoz, vice president of National Council of La Raza, said, “It’s a foregone conclusion that we should be at the table for policy debates and in a position of authority,” because Hispanics are affected by major issues facing all voters. Latinos will be prominent in an Obama administration “just as we would be in any administration moving forward,” she added.

But as the first African-American elected to the presidency, Obama is expected to face enormous pressures from various interests — women, Asian-Americans, Latinos and especially African-Americans — for top positions in his administration.

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As is always the case those who helped deliver the candidate his victory want some payback for their loyalty and hard work…

Hispanics delivered. Now the question is, how much can Latinos expect from Obama?

The president-elect has not made any firm commitments. During a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in September, he asked for their policy ideas and their votes and added, “When I’m president, I’ll be asking many of you to serve at every level of government.”

Cecilia Munoz, vice president of National Council of La Raza, said, “It’s a foregone conclusion that we should be at the table for policy debates and in a position of authority,” because Hispanics are affected by major issues facing all voters. Latinos will be prominent in an Obama administration “just as we would be in any administration moving forward,” she added.

But as the first African-American elected to the presidency, Obama is expected to face enormous pressures from various interests — women, Asian-Americans, Latinos and especially African-Americans — for top positions in his administration.

`

Read More →