You’re saying that it’s a good thing the victim didn’t bring that can of Mace, because now she knows what real harm can occur.

We don’t know what would have happened to the Maine sisters, Specter, or others had we 41 or 42. We do know what happened with 40. It wasn’t good.

The thing you’re forgetting is what a disaster Obamacare is for the country. That trumps benefits to the party, however lasting, because the party is not good enough to make up for it. You gave plenty of examples there.

Maybe you’re trying to say that this medicine will make the party strong, wise, and good enough to make up for the damage the Dems will do to the country, but you didn’t show that.

That gang of RINO’s you identified were and ARE the problem….and McConnell seems hell bent on staying with that club.
….. even after Dems gave world the Christmas shaft, GOP still is only listening to the RINO/Huffington/McGrahamnesty liberal voice.

Worried about two things though:

1. Breaking the RINO mindset…NOW so that we can cancel the Chairman Mao policies of the Dems from going any further and create conservative new seats…it will mean DC Uffington mindset will have to get NUKED…
…and NUKED A LOT.
2. Overcoming the thousand to one liberal monopoly in the media against a ZERO FIGHT GOP

in moments of clarity I have thought that if our country survives the next election cycle, it will be a duel blessing: the actual survival and the ginormous wake up call to American citizens just how close we have come to destruction of economy and national security and personal liberties from within. If McCain had been elected … or if we had a few more senators … we’d be the frog in the slow boil to bigger gov’t, more spending, and less actual representation. Cause it is hard to argue we weren’t heading there in the last decade anyway. And those newly awakened patriots … and I include myself … may have spent the next decade groaning at headlines but not actually taking up the fight for liberty.

I guess you can call this a “correction” of sort. This is strong and needed medicine for the country, but DAMN, is it painful!

If Scott Brown pulls off the miracle in Massachusetts on January 19 and that is a 50-1 shot at least, we will see how this plays out.

It is for sure that the RINOs you mention would have gone for a lesser health care bill in order to compromise and be nice. It would keep being expanded by the Democrats with RINO cooperation until we have the bill we are looking at now. Better for the Democrats to own this thing. My clueless Senator Alexander was never a conservative and only has gotten more liberal during his terms in the Senate. No need to add my comments about the downfall of the Republican party, it has been discussed thoroughly here.

I am concerned that even if we got a veto proof Congress it would be an excrement sandwich again.
The newly empowered majority would see how powerful they are and offer the USA peanuts in changes, keeping most of Obamacare forexample while alteringafew paragraphs.
No thanks. Drive a stake thru its heart. Along wih Dept oHomelnad security and education. Break up HHS. Scotch Transportation also.

The gist of your argument seems to be that having 40 Republican Senators has enabled the Republican caucus to stay unified in opposition because it was a losing cause, and therefore it gives the Democrats undeniable ownership of this round, thus possibly enabling the Republican party to benefit politically.

Whereas, with 41 or 42 Senators, the Democrats would have picked off the necessary margin anyway, but would then have been able to claim a fig leaf of “bipartisan” support.

Your evidence primarily is the past support by Republicans for government expansion into health care.

I suspect your second point is quite true (though you can’t test a hypothetical) – and then we at RedState would have been furious at the Republican “turncoats” like we were with Specter (and to a lesser extent the two Maine sisters) after the stimulus bill – and thus less focused on the Democrats.

However, the first part is less valid, because the message thus far to the Senate leadership has not been a commitment to repeal or emasculate the bill, as we saw with McConnell’s evasion when asked that questions. The Senate Republican leadership very well can live with it so long as they don’t have to own it.

Rather they want to use it as political fodder (which I don’t think will be successful at all, but that’s a diary topic for me to write on sometime) – so that they can ride the discontent to elect more RINOs in the 2010 reaction.

In other words, the net result is that given the current state of Republican Senators, passing ObamaCare’s permanent change in health care is too high a price for a transient (at best) political advantage – just so that we elect more RINOs who as you document well got us into this mess in the first place when they were in charge, which is why they aren’t in charge anymore.

Again, Cold Warrior is on the right track – we need to take charge of the party leadership starting from the ground up if we want to have any chance of reversing the current accelerating path towards a tyrannical, overbearing Federal government.

And ObamaCare will push the clock to a few minutes before midnight.

Americans should count their blessings, as they say everything happens for a reason.
The election of Obami & Company not only shook America to its core it gave America a second chance to correct the mistakes of the last decade. Now that Americans have the opportunity to see real socialism in action . It is up to us To clean up the mess we have created not only in the last 10 but 60 years.
America consider herself lucky, you better use this once in a life time event wisely, otherwise you will be parish for ever.

http://www.brownforussenate.com/

There is certainly plenty of blame to go around, but in the end the blame lies with the electorate. We got what we voted and kept voting for, and the same is true for the current political reality in which many are finding out the hard way isn’t the solution to the problems we, as a nation, thought we had.

It amazes me that we (America) have to keep learning the same lessons over again, as Obama and Democrats did not lie about nor hide what they stand for and in reality were not presenting anything new during the campaign but rather reflecting a desire to return the same big government that caused the economic problems in the 70s and subsequently could not solve them.

The real problem is that we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want all of the prosperity and innovation that comes with personal and economic freedom, but then we refuse to put up with inconveniences and risks of living in a free society and vote for big government, or big government dressed up in ‘free market’ solutions that sucks it dry. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the perennial economic stagnation of Europe should be indication enough that it is far better to put up with some of the inconveniences that come with living in a free society and free economy and preserve the liberties that were purchased with the blood of our forefathers than it is to have every aspect of our lives run from Washington DC with far greater negative impact than positive. Simply put, politics and economic markets serve two entirely different purposes in society that are mutually exclusive and we somehow keep confusing them as one having much to do with the other.

The framers realized the potential economic power of freedom that is protected by the political establishment and the inability of tyranny to dictate positive results, therefore limited the reach of the Federal govt with enumerated powers in order to support freedom and prosperity rather than suffocate it. Until we relearn the lessons of the framers and insist upon adherence to enumerated powers we will keep going around on the squirrel cage of cause and effect, creating more problems for ourselves than we solve.

We all know that big media and the Dems have been giving “advice” to the Republicans for years. The problem is that they’ve been listening. That HAS to stop NOW! They tell us we need to be more “centrist”. Well I call BS! McCain was the biggest “centrist” there is and we saw how that worked out in 2008. When the so-called conservative party starts being conservative again then we will draw plenty of Independants and some minorities. We have to face the fact that the Dem party has most of the minority population in their pockets at this point in time. However, if we give enough folks a reason to vote for the GOP and not just against the Dems then we will see more true conservatives getting elected and I believe more minorities will join with us when they see that conservatives want what is best for everyone. I think the true lesson we must learn from the Tea Party movement is that RINO’s are killing the party and that true conservatives can not only save the GOP but the country as well.

We can certainly argue all day long about what would have happened had Republicans gained more than 40 seats. But that assumes “straight line” compliance with the imperial, almost tyrannical and certainly presumptuous activities the Democrats have undertaken in the last year. These have defied the legitimate and constitutional limits placed upon American legislative bodies and tarnished our republican democracy.

Democrats have used a cornucopia of legislative, some would say anti-democratic contrivances to achieve ideological goals and steal individual liberty. This is the so-called soft tyranny that Alexis de Tocqueville spoke of in action.

The question therefore becomes, would Republicans (capital “R”) have risked the wrath of voters and American public opinion, as Democrats do today, to achieve such scurrilous, misguided and largely ideological objectives? I personally find no evidence to support such contentions; that is that some Republican Party members dalliance with modern liberal precepts would proceed unimpeded against a majority of the people’s will. That would certainly stop most legislative bodies in their tracks because it speaks to their survival as such. Accordingly, this is something only enabled by an executive branch and legislative branch having the historic majorities currently being enjoyed.

Without question, the Republican Party, especially the so-called “moderate” members have watered down our fundamental philosophical beliefs. As you correctly noted above, those pieces of legislation are remnants of a destructive departure from principled stands which have differentiated our party in the minds of the American populace. Have they destroyed our party? Well I would argue, yes. But more notably and importantly they have left a distinct, odious opinion on the citizenry. Would this have proceeded against the current historically negative tide? I have not seen an argument that would support that theory.

Past is prologue. Republicans had been regularly complicit in the expansion of government – and there is NO question… NONE… that if we had 43 Republicans, they would have had “negotiated” a watered down, “less bad” version of healthcare reform – something representing a mix of expansion of current programs, Wyden-Bennett and Obamacare.

Republicans would have owned it.

Until we wake up and realize that, we are refusing to admit the kind of actual, real change necessary to take the Party back.

It seems we are in a death spiral where the minority party obstructs and hopes the majority fails miserably. The more failure, the more chances the minority regains the majority.

Unchecked by concerned citizens, the REPS might give token resistance and not do everything they can to stop horrible programs from the left, all for re-election purposes.

The race to the bottom. Bad for America.

Hogan, I think you bring the matter properly into focus, in the sense of Republicans making their own bed.

That Republicans deserve their own demise is accepted.

But I will accept no premise, not ever, that Republicans are to blamefor anything the Marxists-Alinskyites Democrats have done once they attained their 60-40 ascendancy.

EVERYTHING these cruds have done to America is THEIR fault. Not Republicans’. 100% responsibility.

So Byron, you can go suck on it. pal. We are not codependents here.

We have a great opportunity to regain the filibuster in only 21 days and it’s great to see http://mittromneycentral.com/2009/12/30/scott-brown-could-be-our-41st-vote-in-the-senate/ jumping on board full steam.