Hah. Ramesh Ponnuru has now been enlisted to try to talk sense to the Republican hive-mind. I guess he didn’t get the memo that the Borg doesn’t listen to pinheads and consultants.
I love how Ramesh is forced to conclude his column, as if he knows he’s talking to morons.
One possible outcome of this debate is that the Republican House passes a government-funding bill that doesn’t include money for Obamacare, but then gives in to the Democratic Senate on the issue. At that point the conservative groups that are pushing for defunding will say Republican leaders have again betrayed them, and get back to the vital work of raising donations off that idea.
That won’t be the happiest of endgames for Republicans, but it would still be better than a shutdown or default that failed to achieve their goals while inflicting political damage on themselves — and, in the case of default, substantial economic damage on everyone else.
The repeal of Obamacare is a worthy and potentially popular cause, but it won’t be accomplished through sheer willpower.
So, the best outcome that Mr. Ponnuru can come up with is that the House does everything he’s advising them not to do and then Mitch McConnell and John Boehner sell them out. That’s the best possible outcome.
What a bunch of idiots.
Does even one person in any of the various permutations of the Tea Party know who Ramesh Ponnuru or Ross “Chunky Bobo” Douthat are?
Depends on whether or not they’ve gone on a National Review cruise.
Not many I bet. Who is Douthat’s biggest audience after all? Liberals tut-tut’ing him for all the Chunky Reese Witherspoon(and related) stuff and his Catholic nuttery.
Maryland premiums among lowest in country
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. Maryland already has some price controls in place, and guarantees coverage to every child.
I also just walked into a Mexican restaurant near me to order takeout. They have newspapers all over in Spanish, and on the front page of every one of them is about Steve King. How’s the outreach going?
Tom Coburn gives logic a try. Good luck, buddy.
Reading that made me think they’re actually going to shut down the government.
A lot of these idiots probably think shutting down the government was Newt Gingrich’s greatest accomplishment.
Rusty Limpballs was supposedly on the air today saying just that!!
Well, think about it: those were the days when Rush was young, trim, dashing and tanked all the time. Of course the shutdown thing rocked!
Well, he shut down the government, mumblemublelosthisspeakership, then came within an eyelash of taking down the Mighty Santorum Machine. Hey, pretty good long-term career move!
“lashed to the beast”
the gop caught their beastie. now they get to go down with it.
Call them fish meal.
They remind me of the underpants dwarves, frankly.
Giving new meaning to the term political theater.
What he was intending to say. After folks do their financial planning, the results are going to be quite different. Killing the subsidies affects people whose family income is less than $126,360 if there are 6 in the family.
healthinsurance.org: Will you receive an Obamacare subsidy?
There is an interesting post about how the WH is projecting that if about 2.7 million of the 18-35 year olds sign up, that will be enough to keep the prices of the plans on the marketplaces stable.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/how-reasonable-is-the-white-houses-marketplace-enrollmen
t-goal/
When people see the plan prices and subsidies available, the Repubs are going to be in trouble. I hope it helps the few Guv and local races in 2013.
Love this comment at Ponnuru’s blog. It doubles down on the brain dead sentiment of “get government hands off my medicare”:
“Get the government and the insurance companies out of health care”
Wow.
Remember the 2010 GOP Senate candidate in Nevada and her “chickens for health care” bartering recommendation?
I wonder how many chickens for transplant surgery and follow up.
lota of jobs to be created building pens and chicken coops next the hospital [supposing a person has, say sheep instead of chickens, then what?]
I suppose we’ll have to create a few chicken, sheep, etc. broker jobs as well.
Breaking: Goldman Sachs driving sheep from warehouse to warehouse in a scheme to manipulate mutton futures!
Wow — out West, this could bring back the cattle drive!
good times!
Johnathan Strong: The NSA Fight
Hardly Robert Byrd material.
Mmmmmmm.
Yuk. Yuk. Yuk.
And ahh….bipartisanship:
The first substantial news piece I’ve seen from the NRO.
What is interesting is how Boenher’s operating style and Cantor’s operating style are described. No wonder the logic isn’t working.
The way I see it, if Obamacare is truly so terrible, then the best political move the Republicans can make is to let it be fully implemented. They have sufficiently gone on record as hating the plan, so they have plausible deniability. And even if someone were uncertain if their representative is for/against it, if the plan is that bad they are going to automatically assume the Democrat is to blame.
It’s really not all that different from the Iraq war. Even if your Democratic Senator voted for it, the Republicans were the ones that took most of the heat.
All this nonsense about wanting to defund is either: 1) they believe their own line of bullshit, 2) they are doing anything they can to prevent having to do real governing, or 3) The know that the changes will have an improvement on the lives of voters and they don’t want that to happen (if Dems get the credit).
Either way, if I were Boehner and McConnell, I would sit back and let the plan go through as written; and if it sucks I would be ready with a big fat bag of “I Told You So.”….but something tells me the GOP is more afraid that the plan will actually work and that could mean the death knell for their fascist plots to assign the federal government to corporate interests.
The Biggest Mistake that the GOP made was not trying to co-op ownership of the ACA. Despite that Obama signed it, the GOP should have claimed it as a Heritage Foundation/Conservative idea and then allowed people to benefit from it.
“The(y) know that the changes will have an improvement on the lives of voters and they don’t want that to happen (if Dems get the credit).”
I prefer this answer. It is painful to contemplate the possibility that they are so completely deluded that they completely believe their WAY-over-the-top horror stories. And, agreed, since they have totally absolved themselves of any responsibility at all for Obamacare, if GOP leaders really were certain that NONE of the reforms can be implemented effectively, they have created an open field for themselves in the we-told-you-so camp. Unfortunately for them, they take absolutely zero legitimate credit for the popular, effective portions of the law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-war-over-health-care-exchanges.html?smid=tw-share&
_r=0