Silver Linings, Dark Clouds
Updates: 11:18 pm EST:
Add MORE defections: Michael McMahon-NY; Suzanne Kosmus-FL; Bart Gordon-TN; Larry Kissell-NC; John Adler-NJ; Dan Boren-OK; John Tanner-TN; Brian Baird-WA; Harry Teague-NM; Collin Peterson-MN.
There is some question about Sandlin, as the website still praises Obamacare, so the “solid” number now is 17—but Sandlin’s comments indicate she’s against, making it 18. If Pelosi doesn’t handle the abortion issue, it’s at least 19. ABC says the Dems can lose 40.
As of now, eight “Blue Dogs” are on record as voting against the health care bill (Taylor-MS, Skelton-MO, Kratovil-MD, Shuler-NC, Massa-NY, Minnick-ID, Sandlin-SD and Matheson-UT). Two more, Stupak and Childers, say they will vote against it if it contains abortion funding.
And this: Hasan was on Obama’s Homeland Security Transition Team! http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/old/PTTF_ProceedingsReport_05.19.09.pdf
By now you’ve noticed our new web page. It’s beautiful, functional, and I want to give a (in Obama’s words) “shout out” to Jeff and Debra Friend of Forward Media Group in Dayton, OH. Now, on to business.
Tuesday night’s election did indeed send some messages. No one can deny that the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey were a partial repudiation of the Messiah’s programs and the unemployment thereof. Virginia was particularly important, heralded just a few years ago as the “way forward” for “moderate Democrats.” I remain unconvinced there is such a thing as a “moderate Democrat.” Any Democrat today is de facto supporting Nancy Pelosi and whiny Harry Reid in their fascist (yep, I went there!) attempt to take over the country via the health care system and “cap and tax.”
If you’re not part of the solution—ie, quitting the Democrat Party and voting these totalitarians out—you’re part of the problem and I have no sympathy for you when your business gets taken over or when you get laid off. It’s tough love, and you Dems need it.
That said, Tuesday night showed that the polls which have steadily reported that more and more Americans are holding increasingly conservative positions on everything are indeed right and that people are fed up.
The only ones not getting the message are those in Washington, and, apparently, New York-23, although that is a Democrat district to be sure. Other silver linings you might not have heard about: 7 Texas local representatives/judges/officials switched parties to the GOP after Tuesday; the two-term incumbent black mayor of Dayton (a city overwhelmingly Democrat and substantially black) was kicked out for an “Independent” recruited and supported by the Republicans; Toledo did the same thing, booting its Democrat incumbent mayor; and one of the two bigger cities in North Carolina relieved its Democrat mayor of duty. At local levels, where all this shows up first, there is an absolute groundswell of anti-Democrat (no, NOT “anti-incumbent”) sentiment.
Enough ink (or pixels) has already been spilled over NY-23. Whether or not the Conservative, Doug Hoffman, could have won had he received the GOP support and funding earlier is unknown. I’m not—as Rush and many others on our side have said—ready to say that “merely being conservative” guarantees a win, especially in some of these socially liberal enclaves. It doesn’t hurt to be a good candidate (Hoffman was boring as dry ice); and you certainly need money and a good organization. National trends and the association with local failed policies also play a part—ask Ohio’s Ken Blackwell.
But there remain some very large dark clouds. My opinion of several weeks ago—that they “just don’t care” what the public thinks about health care—is still in place. Yes, they’ve delayed passage. Yes, the Dems are scrambling to use different language. Yes, a handful of Dems are scared. There is, however, no indication yet that any of these things will result in anything less than a full-blown “public option,” with federal abortion funding, and the eventual destruction of the private insurance industry. It’s going to pass folks.
You can march, protest, Tea Party, and Liberty Group all you want, but I think it’s going to pass. If we can succeed in dragging this on for three or four more months, we have a chance to stop it. But they are desperate to get this done in 2009, before they are in election primary cycles. They are counting on you to forget: and here is the tough part, because Americans have traditionally, well, forgotten. One can argue that in fact the 2006 congressional and senate races were really the 2004 election on bad memory—that people on sheer momentum gave Bush and the GOP congress two more years because they forgot their anger over the war or whatever.
At any rate, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi think that if they can get this through—by threatening so called “blue dogs” (which I don’t believe in, any more than pink unicorns), by Obama promising them ACORN support in their reelections, or government jobs if they are kicked out, or by hysterical pressure from the uber-lib groups—the “doomsday machine” will provide a permanent Democrat majority for eternity. Resisting that will be phenomenally tough for any Democrat, no matter how “moderate” or endangered electorally.
In 1941, Hitler knew that Franklin Roosevelt was serious about aiding Britain if America got into the war. It didn’t matter. Just as the Japanese gambled that they could knock out the American presence in the Pacific—not just the 7th Fleet—with one strike, Hitler gambled that he would grab Russia’s resources and win the war before American power could be brought to bear. That he was horrifically wrong did not keep him from acting on his perceptions anyway. He “heard” Roosevelt, and gambled that he could still win.
That’s what the Democrats are doing today, and I don’t see that the election changed that.