"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
The House has voted for repeal, and now the folks who brought you the Tea Party Express are demanding that the Senate take action:
From CampaignToDefeatObama.com.
Mitch McConnell is promising an up-or-down Senate vote on repeal. Let’s keep their feet to the fire, folks. Give us an up-or-down vote, and if it doesn’t pass, we’ll vote out the SOBs in November 2012 — and if the next bunch of SOBs can’t get it done, we’ll just keep voting out SOBs until we do get it repealed.
Philip Klein points out this fact at The American Spectator. As an indicator of majoritarian sentiment, I’d say that’s a pretty good argument for Republicans to push for a vote in the Senate.
Also: Three House Democrats — Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Mike Ross of Arkansas and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina — joined all 242 Republicans in voting to repeal ObamaCare. We’re waiting for Steve Cohen to denounce these Democrats as Nazi stooges. Maybe DailyKos can target them in next year’s primaries.
Strangely enough, 10 Democrats who voted “no” on passage in 2009 also voted against repeal, which gives the GOP ammunition against them in the next election cycle: If you wouldn’t vote to pass it, why won’t you vote to repeal it?
Disagree with them and you’re a brownshirt:
In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
“They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels,” Cohen said. “You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing. And Congressman Cohen didn’t stop there.
“The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it–believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover,” Cohen said.
Meanwhile, it appears that Sheila Jackson-Lee has shared her “health-care-is-a-right” talking points with John Lewis:
“Well, when you start off with the Preamble of the Constitution, you talk about the pursuit of happiness,” said Lewis. “You go to the 14th Amendment–it’s equal protection under the law and we have not repealed the 14th Amendment. People have a right to have health care. It’s not a privilege but a right.”
In all sincerity, Congressman: To assert that some people have a “right” to goods and services that other people must work to produce — well, there is a phrase for that and indeed, it is mentioned in the Constitution.
Check the 13th Amendment, which abolished involuntary servitude.
UPDATE: Cohen wants to repeal Godwin’s Law or something. Kudos to CNN’s John King for calling him to account for that . . . uh, “blood libel.”
Sally Pipes in the New York Post:
Repeal of ObamaCare can’t come soon enough — as several damaging provisions are set to take effect this year.
For starters, it has effectively stopped the construction of physician-owned hospitals throughout the country.
Section 6001 of the health-care law required physician-owned hospitals to obtain their Medicare certification by the end of last year. Without it, they can’t treat Medicare patients. And the facilities needed to be open to get that certification.
So construction halted at 45 hospitals as the New Year arrived. Work on countless others will never start, having been effectively banned by ObamaCare. This will limit competition in the health-care marketplace, driving up costs for patients.
ObamaCare is causing a pandemic of political insanity and Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) is Patient Zero:
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, said on Tuesday afternoon that repealing the national health care law would violate the Constitution.
Arguing that the Commerce Clause provides the constitutional basis for ObamaCare, Jackson Lee said repealing the law by passing Republicans’ H.R. 2 violates both the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“The Fifth Amendment speaks specifically to denying someone their life and liberty without due process,” she said in a speech on the House floor moments ago. “That is what H.R. 2 does and I rise in opposition to it. And I rise in opposition because it is important that we preserve lives and we recognize that 40 million-plus are uninsured.
She continued, “Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?”
Allahpundit has a link to the C-SPAN video. When you begin to think you have the “right” to goods and services that others must work to produce, clearly you have descended into hopeless madness.
Or you’re a liberal Democrat. Six of one, half-dozen of the other . . .
(Via Memeorandum.)
Watch this video in which the Godfather’s Pizza CEO discusses the economic impact of government health-care with Bill Clinton, and tell me if you can think of any Republican candidate better qualified to argue the case for repealing ObamaCare:
You really ought to read this 1994 Newsweek article that highlights Cain’s key role in helping defeat HillaryCare. A lot of pundits keep low-balling Cain’s 2012 prospects, but Dave Weigel points out how that moment made Cain a conservative hero:
Herman Cain’s political career began when he defeated Bill Clinton on live television. . . .
Conservatives treated the Cain mutiny like a bootleg from a Bob Dylan/George Harrison jam session, passed from fan to fan. Rush Limbaugh played the clip on his short-lived TV show. Cain’s senator, Paul Coverdell, called him a “profile in courage.” Newt Gingrich praised Cain and, after Republicans won Congress in the fall, gave him a slot on a flat-tax study group. . . .
Last week Cain launched a presidential exploratory committee, becoming the first Republican candidate of the 2012 race. . . .
In 2011, the Republican electorate wants to hear from anyone who’s not a politician. . . .
“The political landscape has changed dramatically because of the citizens’ movement spurred by the Tea Party movement,” Cain told me in an interview, giving me the elevator pitch for why he couldn’t win a GOP Senate primary in 2004 but can win a presidential primary now. “Based upon me being very active in that citizens movement, talking to dozens and dozens and dozens of Tea Party rallies, events, conferences all over this country, I believe that people have a better attitude for an unconventional candidate—someone who’s more of a problem-solver than a politician.”
He’s right about the Tea Party. When Cain speaks at conservative conferences and Tea Party rallies, he gets bigger crowds than members of Congress, and only slightly smaller crowds than Fox News hosts. . . .
You should read the rest of that. Be prepared for the usual skeptical snarkiness from Weigel, who doesn’t want to blow his smart-guy rep by being seen as overrating a longshot. But I frankly think Cain’s being underestimated.
He’s got a rare combination: Business experience and populist appeal. I’ve called him “Steve Forbes with charisma,” but you could also think of him as Ross Perot without the craziness. If you’ve seen how Cain can connect with a conservative crowd, and then you start thinking about the kind of grassroots, hand-shaking, retail politics that it takes to win in Iowa and New Hampshire . . .
Hey, he already beat cancer. You gonna bet against a guy like that?
Kinda. It was a procedural vote:
[T]he new Republican-led House took a first step Friday toward a symbolic vote to repeal his landmark health care overhaul law, which would provide coverage to more than 30 million Americans without health insurance.
But the 236-181 largely party-line vote is unlikely to amount to more than a political message, since Democrats who still run the Senate have promised to block efforts to scrap the law and Obama has veto power. . . .
The House action set the rules for a debate next week that will culminate in a simple for-or-against vote on repeal, scheduled for Wednesday.
That’s from an Associated Press story that’s so busy trying to tell you What To Think that they barely tell you What Actually Happened.
More from The Lonely Conservative and Gateway Pundit.
Like I said this morning, it’s important that Republicans force a vote on this issue so that “moderate” Democrats can’t hide.
Make Democrats the ObamaCare Party. The American people hate ObamaCare. Because the American people are raaaaacist!
Armed with a rather bizarre CBO estimate — claiming to show that repealing ObamaCare would actually increase the deficit — the president is now trying to push Republicans off their game:
President Obama officially drew a line in the sand Thursday evening, threatening to veto House Republicans’ attempt to repeal Obama’s landmark healthcare law.
In a statement of administration policy released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the administration said that repeal would “would explode the deficit, raise costs for the American people and businesses, deny an estimated 32 million people health insurance, and take us back to the days when insurers could deny, limit or drop coverage for any American.”
Of course he would veto it — if it were to pass the Senate, which it almost certainly won’t do before 2013. The whole point of having a vote in the House on repeal now is to force Democrats to vote on it. There are still a few “moderate” Democrats in the House who got re-elected after making a big deal during the campaign about their votes against ObamaCare.
Good. Now let’s see if they’ll vote to repeal it.
Boehner’s got the votes to pass the repeal, and then it will be up to Republicans in the Senate to try to maneuver the repeal bill forward to get a vote there. It’s important to get Democrats on the record either for or against repealing this godawful unconstitutional monstrosity.
ObamaCare has never been popular, and if Democrats are the party of ObamaCare, they’ll get their asses kicked again in 2012. Republicans ought not let themselves be bluffed into folding a winning hand.
Perhaps the first step toward repeal:
A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation’s sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama’s signature domestic initiative.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance.
In a 42-page opinion, Hudson said the provision of the law that requires most individuals to get insurance or pay a fine by 2014 is an unprecedented expansion of federal power that cannot be supported by Congress’s power to regulate interstate trade.
Without the indvidual mandate, the projected “savings” calculations don’t work, and so you might as well repeal the whole damn thing. Big first-round win for Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli (who is my favorite GOP candidate to challenge Jim Webb in 2012, FWIW).
The Virginia decision will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, of course. More at Ace of Spades HQ, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Instapundit and Memeorandum.