Health Care
From WaPo: "Speaker of the House says she does not have enough votes to pass the Senate version of the health-care bill."
The bill is dead.
We now enter an entirely new phase of the health-care debate. Everything now weighs upon how the parties react to the brave new world in which they find themselves. I expect a new debate will begin, and I hope Republicans struggle to take ownership of a more reasonable health-care package.
It's in the Democrats' interest to pass something, even at this late hour when no glory will be taken from the battlefield. The GOP should have the upper-hand now, forcing the Dems to pay a price for the bi-partisan cooperation they once scorned.
Let us pause now from the usual sobering understanding we learn concerning all the trends of our era from the likes of John Derbyshire, Mark Levin, Jonathan Rauch, all the good political theorists like Tocqueville, not to mention NLT's own brilliant William Voegli......and just say it:
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hold on, rumor mill is saying that the Democratic leadership is planning to push on via reconciliation. They seem to continue to buy into the idea that they must pass a bill, almost any bill, or else.
Carl, yup. But the GOP needs to take Justin's advice.
If Obama was smart he'd do a strategic retreat like Bill Clinton did in 1994...blather nonsense about the "era of big government being over" and pretend to change his spots. Somehow, I don't think Obama is that clever...or perhaps that dishonest. We'll see.
Carl, I think I said just that on Tuesday night.
I hope Scott Brown is as good as we need him to be.
The main "woo-hoo" is that the electorate, even in Mass., is basically still "America" as conservative Americans hope. The current statistics on how many Americans consider themselves conservative (again?) is encouraging. I don't usually like the idea of living into real age, but I would like to know what my children's children make of the 2008 election and its aftermath.