I’m in the awkward position of supporting Ted Cruz et. al.’s attempt to defund-via-narrow-procedural-filibuster-followed-by-Democrats-blinking strategy while also believing that the effort is almost certainly doomed to failure. The reason it’s doomed is that it requires complex (and somewhat counter-intuitive) Senate rule voting maneuvers, and for Harry Reid and the Democratic majority to give in on key points, which I think is very unlikely. Nor do I agree with the “repeal it now or we’re stuck with ObamaCare for all time” rhetoric. There are no lost causes in American politics, because there are no won causes. The Great Recession isn’t making Obama and the Democratic crony cohort any more popular, making a GOP takeover of the the Senate in 2014 (and of White House in 2016, very possibly by Cruz himself) increasingly likely.
But I do think Cruz’s filibuster is necessary because he’s making the case for repeal and forcing the GOP establishment to either back him or show their true colors. All signs point to ObamaCare becoming more and more unpopular as time goes on, making repeal a winning issue. But the first step is actually fighting for repeal, and Ted Cruz is there.
Harping on a theme he’s harped on before, Mickey Kaus dinged Ted Cruz (again) for not opposing illegal alien amnesty with the single-minded focus Kaus thinks he should. (“You didn’t clap loud enough! Tinkerbell is dead!Amnesty is Alive!”) This criticism is misguided:
Mickey Kaus is a Democrat and an ObamaCare supporter, albeit an entirely more reasonable example of each than usually found, as well as an amnesty opponent. Thus dinging Ted Cruz for fighting ObamaCare rather than amnesty is basically saying “A Republican senator is fighting hard against a program I support but not fighting hard enough against a program I oppose.”
Those doubting Cruz’s opposition to amnesty should take another look at what he said about it back when I interviewed him in 2011:
Cruz fought and voted against amnesty when it was before the Senate, but now it’s before the House. Given that whole “bicameral legislature” idea, the issue is beyond Cruz’s legislative purvey.
While I won’t go so far as to declare amnesty dead (as some have), if only because the GOP establishment seems to have a limitless appetite for suicidal compromise, its chances this legislative session do look slim, and all that was accomplished without Cruz taking the leading role against it.
Given all that, Kaus continuing to harp on Cruz’s appears to be of an idee fixe on Kaus’ part than real criticism.
Sometimes you see a troll attempt so shamelessly blatant that, like the ludicrous science in a Sy Fy channel movie, you can’t help but laugh at the obvious, naked stupidity.
Today’s example of trolling comes from that renowned redoubt of Euroleftisms, The Guardian:
One can only smile at the image of wave after wave of UN troops, each bearing ammo cans laden with Strongly Worded Letters, landing on America’s shores to liberate their oppressed liberal brethren.
The article itself is the usual insular ruling-class assumption of Absolute Righteousness on the part of the far left agenda and the simultaneous assumption of Evil Incarnate on the part of their political opponents.
In the comments, a few worthies like Clayton Cramer have undertaken debunking some of its more obvious idiocies, but this is really a piece that need only be labeled with the “Maximum Trolling” tag and then ignored.
On the other hand, if you’re a Republican congressman, and you make $172,000 a year, you don’t get to complain about it. That means you, Rep. Phil Gingrey.
Biggest story you’re not hearing much about? German elections this weekend. If Angela Merkel’s party should lose, and be replaced with a party less enthused with endless PIIGS bailouts, well, things could get interesting.
Obama official refuses to release information pertaining to a a Freedom of Information Act request. Stonewalling the press and withholding evidence? Obviously he must be bucking for a promotion.
And the battle is joined. I support the move, and hope it’s the right course of action, knowing that it might not succeed. Then again, I would also be willing to see no spending limit raise at all, and force the federal government to live within its (which is to say our) means.
Now the ball is in the court of Senate Republicans, where Ted Cruz says he’ll filibuster any ObamaCare funding if necessary. Now would be a great time for senators like John McCain, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham to look at their political ID cards, realize they’re Republicans, and back him. Whether than will actually happen or not is another question.
Don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin…
Which is not to say that DeLay is free of sin. Indeed, DeLay’s leadership was one of the reasons the Republican House majority went from backing Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America to succumbing to Washington’s usual big-spending, horse-trading, “campaign dollars for access” in less than a decade. It’s just that none of those were crimes in the eyes of Democratic prosecutors. As far as they were concerned, DeLay’s real crime was helping unseat Democratic incumbents, and for that they had to find something, anything to nail him on.
I do wonder what happens to DeLay’s co-defendants who plead guilty to lesser charges to avoid prosecution (one of whom I used to know back in my college days)…
New California law to shield pedophiles in teacher’s unions in California each year, seven to eight times as much sexual misconduct takes place in public schools as in the Catholic Church.
What it’s like living in bankrupt Stockton: “Anderson called the police recently after a boy was shot riding his bike down the alley that runs alongside her home. It took them four hours to show up.”
California toll road agency misses overly optimistic projections, may have to declare bankruptcy. “The Foothill-Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency, which operates 39 miles (63 kilometers) of toll highways in Orange County, risks default on $2.4 billion in debt.”
Rick Perry goes fishing for new businesses to relocate to Texas in Maryland.
Also Missouri, where the Democratic governor just vetoed a tax cut.
Bloomberg’s health crusade is so unusual because it embraces a political mode usually associated with the right. Conservatives favor regulation of vice and personal behavior, especially related to sex, because they believe that the state has a legitimate role in shaping the culture. Traditional social values, they believe, undergird stable families and a well-functioning community. Liberals traditionally want to remove the government from regulating personal behavior and to deploy it only in the economic realm.
That quote might have had some nodding relationship to reality in, oh, 1980 or so. But it’s certainly not conservatives who have been pushing to:
Ban civilian firearms ownership
Increase tobacco taxes
Ban incandescent light bulbs
Force Catholics to pay for abortions
Ban “high flow” toilets
Ban “hate speech”
Ban plastic bags
Ban transfats
Ban crosses and managers on public land
Ban liquor stores in black neighborhoods
Ban talk radio
Ban government use of the word “Christmas”
Ban SUVs, or any other vehicle that get insufficiently “virtuous” gas mileage
Ban genetically modified foods
Ban foie gras
And don’t forget that the “War on Drugs” was an extremely bipartisan affair, with Hubert Humphrey, Joe Biden and Tip O’Neil all among its enthusiastic backers.
The idea that modern (as opposed to classical) liberals “want to remove the government from regulating personal behavior” is a naked, vainglorious, self-flattering lie on Chait’s part, and only someone living in the coastal Liberal Reality Bubble could possibly type it with a straight face.
Today would be a good time to read the Constitution all the way through again. Or maybe for the first time, if you’re working in the Obama White House…
