Dems lack votes for Health Care passage with simple majority

[Nevermind]

Jesus dude. What the fuck is wrong with you?

He's a Republican.

You're the one who is all about killing some babies.

[EvilMadman]

If the GOP got it's way on health care:

Yeah, but couldn't that happen anyway under the new Health Care bill, if the "Government Committee" [page 30] or the "Health Choices Commissioner" [page 42] approving benefits/treatment decided that the needed treatment was cost prohibitive?

Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but still, an "Advisory Committee", "Health Choices Commissioner", "Government Committee", seriously?! Shouldn't someone's health be between a patient and their doctor?

"Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard." [page 58]

"No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly." [Page 124]

Great!

Health bills could expand IRS role - USATODAY.com
Jan 3, 2010 ... Under the current versions of the health care bills, the IRS would oversee: ... In addition, the IRS would collect hundreds of billions of dollars ... The House bill penalty would be up to 2.5% of an individual's income ...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/

YAY! An expansion of the I.R.S. What's not to love about that?

[JakeYonkel]

I really could have done without that picture.

[bane]

I really could have done without that picture.

That makes at least two of us. Way to go for the shock value to make an argument. The sign of a truly gifted debater.

[Nevermind]

Liberal posting dead baby in coffin, blaming republicans= Ok.
Conservative posting the result of liberal policies=Not ok
Gotcha

[NickasInSaltLick]

Actually more poor people (who oddly enough tend to have more kids) should have access to neo and post-natal care under the bill's preventative health provisions. Therefore more babies will be born healthy.

[tin00can]

Liberal posting dead baby in coffin, blaming republicans= Ok.
Conservative posting the result of liberal policies=Not ok
Gotcha

Ever known any conservatives who have had, or have paid for, an abortion?

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

If the GOP got it's way on health care:

Yeah, but couldn't that happen anyway under the new Health Care bill, if the "Government Committee" [page 30] or the "Health Choices Commissioner" [page 42] approving benefits/treatment decided that the needed treatment was cost prohibitive?

Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but still, an "Advisory Committee", "Health Choices Commissioner", "Government Committee", seriously?! Shouldn't someone's health be between a patient and their doctor?

"Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard." [page 58]

"No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly." [Page 124]

I'd like to see a reference for this stuff so I can see if what you're raving about is real or AFDB material. Anyway, what you mean is someone's health should be between a patient and his claims adjuster because a corporate beancounter whose only duty is to maximize profit and shareholder value is the best judge of what is right for us.

Great!

Health bills could expand IRS role - USATODAY.com
Jan 3, 2010 ... Under the current versions of the health care bills, the IRS would oversee: ... In addition, the IRS would collect hundreds of billions of dollars ... The House bill penalty would be up to 2.5% of an individual's income ...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/

YAY! An expansion of the I.R.S. What's not to love about that?

Got anything besides an outdated article?

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

Liberal posting dead baby in coffin, blaming republicans= Ok.
Conservative posting the result of liberal policies=Not ok
Gotcha

Conservatives disgusted by douchebag=Not OK

[SmokeyRamone]

can anyone explain why the president, congress and the senate are exempt from this bill? Talk about hypocrisy, apparently they don't mind forcing the lowly masses to buy insurance or face a fine, but perhaps they feel it's too invasive and heavy handed to apply to them

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

can anyone explain why the president, congress and the senate are exempt from this bill? Talk about hypocrisy, apparently they don't mind forcing the lowly masses to buy insurance or face a fine, but perhaps they feel it's too invasive and heavy handed to apply to them

Which one of those purported scofflaws doesn't have insurance?

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/health ... -congress/

[SmokeyRamone]

so by that logic, anyone who's covered through their employer should also be exempt, correct?

Obviously they're all covered, so why would they have taken the time and effort to exempt themselves from the bill?

[bane]

Liberal posting dead baby in coffin, blaming republicans= Ok.
Conservative posting the result of liberal policies=Not ok
Gotcha

If you can't tell the difference between posting a photo of a baby that looks like it's sleeping in a coffin and a decapitated and limb amputated aborted fetus, there is something wrong with the way you're wired. That photo went way past bad taste into "What the fuck is wrong with you?" territory.

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

What do I think? I think you are trying too hard to find reasons to bitch. Congress (House and Senate) is not exempt. It would appear that some of their staffers may be exempt, though. Why I don't know. As for the Prez, I wonder who would be willing to cover a guy under constant threat of assassination in the world's most stressful job?

[SmokeyRamone]

What do I think? I think you are trying too hard to find reasons to bitch. Congress (House and Senate) is not exempt. It would appear that some of their staffers may be exempt, though. Why I don't know. As for the Prez, I wonder who would be willing to cover a guy under constant threat of assassination in the world's most stressful job?

oh believe me I don't have to look too hard to find anything to complain about with this bill, the mandate in and of itself is enough, the stripping away of our rights, the heavy handed cradle to grave nanny state mentality, taxation as punishment, the fact that we can now be taxed for not spending anything, and the fact that the people who wrote and voted for all this shit exempted themselves from it

nope, no need to look hard at all

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

Absolutely. From the New York Times no less:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opini ... ef=opinion


Hmmm... off the Opinion page. You really can't tell fact from opinion, even when it's clearly noted.

Of the New York Times

An endorsement for one of America's more liberal newspapers. How enlightened of you. There is hope yet for you.

And this:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Medicare- ... l?x=0&.v=2

It's been removed from the bill.
Nice try, though.

Link?

You can't read?

[Ugmo]

The mistake you are making is that you aren't remembering that conservatives outnumber liberals two to one in America. Your 20% base won't win you this one.

This is silly. Completely silly, and I'm pretty sure I addressed this the other day. People describe themselves as conservative, and then it turns out that they support liberal policies. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security... plenty of people refer to themselves as conservative but would scream blue murder if you tried to take those "socialist" programs away from them. Same with this bill. The 60 percent of Americans who wanted a public option disliked the Senate bill because it didn't have one.

False choice.

I don't have any idea what this means.

For good reason.

Okay Juggernaut, don't bother explaining what you're talking about.

[Machado]

So when will Rush Limbaugh leave the country?
Didn't he promise to leave when the Health Care bill was passed?
Just asking


Listen people, this is not any kind of reform.

As long as the PRIVATE INSURANCE COMPANIES are making the decisions, American still do NOT have Universal Health Care.

The Democrats once again failed the people who voted for them by passing a bill that still allows the evil PIC to turn away citizens for pre-existing conditions.

[Ugmo]

Link? I have links to polls showing that conservatives outnumber liberals in America by a 2 to 1 margin. Another poll that shows Americans prefer capitalism over socialism by a near 3 to 1 margin. Of course a self proclaimed liberal would suggest that he's smarter than everyone else and knows what the people polled actually think. It's because he thinks he knows better than the idiot conservatives. Sort of how the democrat congress knows better than the American people.

Poll Shows Strong Public Support
For Range of Health Practices
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 20, 2005

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

A new Harris Interactive poll that measures support for each of 12 different health-care policies, programs or practices, finds significant public support for a range of issues ranging from the conventional to more controversial.

The online survey of 2,242 U.S. adults found an overwhelming majority (96%) of Americans "strongly" or "somewhat" favor Medicare, the medical assistance program for the elderly and disabled, while 91% say they support Medicaid, the program to assist people with very low incomes.

The poll also showed high support for policies or practices that are considered more controversial. Eighty-seven percent of those polled say they support funding of international HIV prevention and treatment programs, while 75% favor universal health insurance, compared with 17% who oppose it. Another 70% support embryonic stem-cell research, compared with about 19% who oppose it.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB ... ?mod=blogs


There you go. People claim to be conservative, yet they overwhelmingly support liberal policies that the Republicans fought tooth and nail to prevent.

Capitalism vs. socialism has jack shit to do with anything. Not too many liberals in America don't support capitalism (with adequate government oversight).

Nobody was ever supporting doing nothing. And you know it. It's a false choice to say otherwise.

Gee, the Republicans don't appear to ever have supported health care reform. They had plenty of time to address it and never bothered to. And the Teabagger nutjobs that support them don't seem to be too enthusiastic about it either. That's why those poll results are highly misleading, because the progressives who wanted a more radical bill still support this legislation over the alternative, which was the status quo.

[EvilMadman]

If the GOP got it's way on health care:

Yeah, but couldn't that happen anyway under the new Health Care bill, if the "Government Committee" [page 30] or the "Health Choices Commissioner" [page 42] approving benefits/treatment decided that the needed treatment was cost prohibitive?

Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but still, an "Advisory Committee", "Health Choices Commissioner", "Government Committee", seriously?! Shouldn't someone's health be between a patient and their doctor?

"Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard." [page 58]

"No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly." [Page 124]

I'd like to see a reference for this stuff so I can see if what you're raving about is real or AFDB material. Anyway, what you mean is someone's health should be between a patient and his claims adjuster because a corporate beancounter whose only duty is to maximize profit and shareholder value is the best judge of what is right for us.

Great!

Health bills could expand IRS role - USATODAY.com
Jan 3, 2010 ... Under the current versions of the health care bills, the IRS would oversee: ... In addition, the IRS would collect hundreds of billions of dollars ... The House bill penalty would be up to 2.5% of an individual's income ...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/

YAY! An expansion of the I.R.S. What's not to love about that?

Got anything besides an outdated article?

Oops! I guess I stumbled across some bad or outdated information. I kept coming up with outdated info, at least I think. Cause I'm not really sure how much of the old rules/regulations have managed to be included in the new bill that the president signed.

They couldn't have come up with a simpler bill with less than 2400 pages?

Half true. It’s true that page 124 forbids any review by the courts of rates the government would pay to doctors and hospitals under the new “public option” insurance plan. But there’s no mention of “price fixing” in the bill; that’s the e-mail author’s phrase. It also remains to be seen if the “public option” plan would grow to become a “government monopoly,” as the author predicts.

factcheck.org

False. There is no mention of any “National ID Healthcard” anywhere in the bill. Page 58 says that government standards for electronic medical transactions "may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card,” to show eligibility for services. Insurance companies typically issue such cards already, but if such a standard were issued the cards would need to be in a standard form readable by computers. The word “may” is used to permit such a standard, but it does not require one.

factcheck.org

http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/24/democ ... -care-law/

Democrats tout restrictions on IRS’s reach in health-care law

dailycaller.com
03/24/10

But there are still plenty of valid reasons to hate this bureaucratic, WAY OVERPRICED, monstrosity anyway.

I still believe the bill is going to negatively affect people. What is with the Democrats and their insane hatred for the middle class and small businesses? You know, getting that great new "affordable" Heath Care coverage isn't really going to mean very much if you lose your Goddamn job!

And I can still imagine the gargantuan tax increases that are going to be needed, eventually, to pay for all this!

Anyway, what you mean is someone's health should be between a patient and his claims adjuster because a corporate beancounter whose only duty is to maximize profit and shareholder value is the best judge of what is right for us.

No! It should be between a patient and the government's official Health Commissar and government "bean counter", because you think that's somehow better.

[EvilMadman]

But at least there is some hope...

Supporters of the Democrats’ health care bill have incorrectly contended that the individual mandate is authorized by the Commerce Clause, the General Welfare Clause, or the Taxing and Spending Clause.

But since the federal government has limited jurisdiction – having only enumerated powers – unless a specific provision of the Constitution empowers a particular law, then that law is unconstitutional. There is no authorization for the individual mandate.

#1 The Commerce Clause, which allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, does not apply to the health care bill, “because there is no interstate commerce when private citizens do not purchase health insurance.” The Commerce Clause covers only those matters where citizens engage in voluntary economic activity.

Government can only regulate economic action; it cannot coerce action on the part of private citizens who do not wish to participate in commerce.

#2 Nor is the bill’s individual mandate authorized under the General Welfare Clause., which applies only to congressional spending. “It applies to money going out from the government; it does not confer or concern any government power to take in money, such as would happen with the individual mandate. Therefore the mandate is outside the scope of the General Welfare Clause.”

#3 And finally, the individual mandate is not authorized under the Taxing and Spending Clause or Income Tax. The Constitution only allows certain types of taxation from the federal government, and the health care bill does fall in those categories.

As for the argument that the health care bill’s individual mandate can be compared to laws requiring auto insurance – an argument President Obama has made – such arguments are invalid: Only state governments can require people to get car insurance.

While the federal government is limited to the powers enumerated in the Constitution, the states have a general police power. The police power enables state governments to pass laws for public safety and public health. The federal government has no general police power, and therefore could not require car insurance.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCa ... d=10178015

[Crazy Levi]

But at least there is some hope...

Supporters of the Democrats’ health care bill have incorrectly contended that the individual mandate is authorized by the Commerce Clause, the General Welfare Clause, or the Taxing and Spending Clause.

But since the federal government has limited jurisdiction – having only enumerated powers – unless a specific provision of the Constitution empowers a particular law, then that law is unconstitutional. There is no authorization for the individual mandate.

#1 The Commerce Clause, which allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, does not apply to the health care bill, “because there is no interstate commerce when private citizens do not purchase health insurance.” The Commerce Clause covers only those matters where citizens engage in voluntary economic activity.

Government can only regulate economic action; it cannot coerce action on the part of private citizens who do not wish to participate in commerce.

#2 Nor is the bill’s individual mandate authorized under the General Welfare Clause., which applies only to congressional spending. “It applies to money going out from the government; it does not confer or concern any government power to take in money, such as would happen with the individual mandate. Therefore the mandate is outside the scope of the General Welfare Clause.”

#3 And finally, the individual mandate is not authorized under the Taxing and Spending Clause or Income Tax. The Constitution only allows certain types of taxation from the federal government, and the health care bill does fall in those categories.

As for the argument that the health care bill’s individual mandate can be compared to laws requiring auto insurance – an argument President Obama has made – such arguments are invalid: Only state governments can require people to get car insurance.

While the federal government is limited to the powers enumerated in the Constitution, the states have a general police power. The police power enables state governments to pass laws for public safety and public health. The federal government has no general police power, and therefore could not require car insurance.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCa ... d=10178015

Put away your pom poms idiot, none of these challenges are going to go anywhere.

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

Half true. It’s true that page 124 forbids any review by the courts of rates the government would pay to doctors and hospitals under the new “public option” insurance plan. But there’s no mention of “price fixing” in the bill; that’s the e-mail author’s phrase. It also remains to be seen if the “public option” plan would grow to become a “government monopoly,” as the author predicts.

factcheck.org

This is irrelevant. The public option was removed. Don't you remember?

Anyway, what you mean is someone's health should be between a patient and his claims adjuster because a corporate beancounter whose only duty is to maximize profit and shareholder value is the best judge of what is right for us.

No! It should be between a patient and the government's official Health Commissar and government "beancounter", because you think that's somehow better.

Official Health Commissar? This is pure fiction. Why not include Darth Vader or Mr. Spock?

[EvilMadman]

But at least there is some hope...

Supporters of the Democrats’ health care bill have incorrectly contended that the individual mandate is authorized by the Commerce Clause, the General Welfare Clause, or the Taxing and Spending Clause.

But since the federal government has limited jurisdiction – having only enumerated powers – unless a specific provision of the Constitution empowers a particular law, then that law is unconstitutional. There is no authorization for the individual mandate.

#1 The Commerce Clause, which allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, does not apply to the health care bill, “because there is no interstate commerce when private citizens do not purchase health insurance.” The Commerce Clause covers only those matters where citizens engage in voluntary economic activity.

Government can only regulate economic action; it cannot coerce action on the part of private citizens who do not wish to participate in commerce.

#2 Nor is the bill’s individual mandate authorized under the General Welfare Clause., which applies only to congressional spending. “It applies to money going out from the government; it does not confer or concern any government power to take in money, such as would happen with the individual mandate. Therefore the mandate is outside the scope of the General Welfare Clause.”

#3 And finally, the individual mandate is not authorized under the Taxing and Spending Clause or Income Tax. The Constitution only allows certain types of taxation from the federal government, and the health care bill does fall in those categories.

As for the argument that the health care bill’s individual mandate can be compared to laws requiring auto insurance – an argument President Obama has made – such arguments are invalid: Only state governments can require people to get car insurance.

While the federal government is limited to the powers enumerated in the Constitution, the states have a general police power. The police power enables state governments to pass laws for public safety and public health. The federal government has no general police power, and therefore could not require car insurance.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCa ... d=10178015

Put away your pom poms idiot, none of these challenges are going to go anywhere.

Constitutional Violations in Healthcare bill

First Amendment (Establishment Clause) and Fourteenth Amendment (Equal Protection Clause) - [Quote: "Exempts from the coverage requirement individuals who object to health care coverage on religious grounds"]: Although the courts allowed the Amish not to pay Social Security tax, this bill would be different if it exempts the Amish and Muslims from participating in the system while forcing the Catholics to participate in it.

Article 1, sections 1 and 8 (Powers of the Congress) and Article 5 (Procedure to Amend the Constitution) - [Quote: "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."] - The quoted text effectively amends the Constitution and abridges the law-making authority of Congress. This has been done without two-thirds majority.

Article 1, Section 8 (Commerce Clause) - The commerce clause grants rights to regulate interstate commerce, not intrastate commerce (health insurance is not interstate commerce since you cannot buy it across state lines). THANK YOU DEMOCRATS & REPUBLICANS! LULZ! Secondly, not buying insurance is not commerce.

Ninth Amendment - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Tenth Amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

freerepublic.com
March 22, 2010

I really hate to break it to you and Obama/Pelosi, but there are laws in this country, that guess what, even the federal government must obey.

[EvilMadman]

Half true. It’s true that page 124 forbids any review by the courts of rates the government would pay to doctors and hospitals under the new “public option” insurance plan. But there’s no mention of “price fixing” in the bill; that’s the e-mail author’s phrase. It also remains to be seen if the “public option” plan would grow to become a “government monopoly,” as the author predicts.

factcheck.org

This is irrelevant. The public option was removed. Don't you remember?

Anyway, what you mean is someone's health should be between a patient and his claims adjuster because a corporate beancounter whose only duty is to maximize profit and shareholder value is the best judge of what is right for us.

No! It should be between a patient and the government's official Health Commissar and government "beancounter", because you think that's somehow better.

Official Health Commissar? This is pure fiction. Why not include Darth Vader or Mr. Spock?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ption-bill

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

Half true. It’s true that page 124 forbids any review by the courts of rates the government would pay to doctors and hospitals under the new “public option” insurance plan. But there’s no mention of “price fixing” in the bill; that’s the e-mail author’s phrase. It also remains to be seen if the “public option” plan would grow to become a “government monopoly,” as the author predicts.

factcheck.org

This is irrelevant. The public option was removed. Don't you remember?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ption-bill

and you're still wrong.

[Supersonic]

That's an opinion piece by some conservative dude.

Translation: You dismiss it out-of-hand, due to the source, rather than read it, regardless.

What a shock.

You know what else is shocking? Me agreeing with David Frum, per this article.


It's quite interesting:

http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

David Frum is no more. See article from The Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 077888.ece

Republican elite in disarray after David Frum is sacked by think-tank

America’s conservatives were in open disarray yesterday after the abrupt sacking of a leading Republican for daring to blame his party for “the most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s”.

David Frum, who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” when he was a speechwriter for President Bush, was fired by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) after posting a column on his website that called healthcare reform a disaster for Republicans and blamed it squarely on their own refusal to compromise with the Obama Administration.

The prominent neo-conservative in both Bush terms said that his departure was forced by a reaction from donors to the AEI, a powerful Republican think-tank that has many former Bush Administration officials on its staff. His sacking came at the end of a week that conservatives predicted would mark the beginning of the end for Democrats in Washington. Instead President Obama has a new nuclear arms treaty to add to his healthcare Bill and it is the Republican movement that is flailing.

Mr Frum posted his column within minutes of the Democrats securing the votes to pass health reform last weekend, condemning a Republican strategy of “no negotiations, no compromise, nothing”. He accused his party of trying to repeat its humiliation of President Clinton in 1994 while forgetting that Mr Obama won office with a larger proportion of the popular vote. “We went for all the marbles, we ended with none,” he wrote.

As the column was distributed among Republican moderates and Democrats, quills were sharpened on the Right for retribution. On Tuesday The Wall Street Journal dismissed Mr Frum as “the media’s go-to basher of fellow Republicans” and attacked him for “peddling bad revisionist history that would have been even worse politics”. On Thursday he was offered the chance to stay on at the think-tank on a non-salaried basis. He declined.

If tensions within the Republican movement were confined to think-tanks and the fringe it would amount to business as usual for a party that lost badly in the last two big election years. However, mainstream figures including the standard-bearers of the Republican Establishment are being forced to the right by purity tests on key issues and a groundswell of Tea Party activism that moderates fear could marginalise the party in the long term.

In Arizona yesterday Senator John McCain hit the campaign trail with Sarah Palin, his old running-mate, in an effort to head off a primary challenge from John Hayworth, a talk-show host who considers the Senator too soft on immigration, same-sex marriage and health reform, even though Mr McCain led Republican demands this week for the Bill to be repealed.

In Florida Charlie Crist, the once-popular Republican Governor, has been attacked relentlessly by Tea Party bloggers since supporting the Obama stimulus package last year. He faces defeat by Marco Rubio, a firebrand of the hard Right, at the midterm elections in November.

Among potential 2012 Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney has been forced to condemn the health reforms as an “historic usurpation of the legislative process” even though it is based largely on a Bill he shepherded into state law as Governor of Massachusetts. Mike Huckabee, until recently a favourite of social conservatives, slid back to also-ran status three months ago when a prisoner he released nine years ago went on a shooting spree.

The backlash against health reform has not yet descended to shooting but it turned so nasty this week that a succession of Republican leaders risked alienating Tea Party agitators to denounce it. Death threats and bricks — such as one thrown through the window of a district office of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter — have no place in politics, John Boehner, the House minority leader, told reporters.

No senior Republican has dared to criticise Mrs Palin for urging her supporters to “reload” and take aim at vulnerable Democrats, whose districts are identified with rifle crosshairs on her website.

This may be because, as Mr Frum said yesterday, “the elite isn’t leading any more; it’s trapped”. It is a trap that threatens moderate conservatism as a whole. If Mr Obama’s reforms prove more popular than anticipated Mr Frum and his allies must find a way to reassert control of their party or get used to irrelevance.

[Crazy Levi]

Allow me to take this opportunity to again laugh at the hilarity of the title of this thread.

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

David Frum is no more. See article from The Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 077888.ece

Republican elite in disarray after David Frum is sacked by think-tank

America’s conservatives were in open disarray yesterday after the abrupt sacking of a leading Republican for daring to blame his party for “the most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s”.

David Frum, who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” when he was a speechwriter for President Bush, was fired by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) after posting a column on his website that called healthcare reform a disaster for Republicans and blamed it squarely on their own refusal to compromise with the Obama Administration.

The prominent neo-conservative in both Bush terms said that his departure was forced by a reaction from donors to the AEI, a powerful Republican think-tank that has many former Bush Administration officials on its staff. His sacking came at the end of a week that conservatives predicted would mark the beginning of the end for Democrats in Washington. Instead President Obama has a new nuclear arms treaty to add to his healthcare Bill and it is the Republican movement that is flailing.

Mr Frum posted his column within minutes of the Democrats securing the votes to pass health reform last weekend, condemning a Republican strategy of “no negotiations, no compromise, nothing”. He accused his party of trying to repeat its humiliation of President Clinton in 1994 while forgetting that Mr Obama won office with a larger proportion of the popular vote. “We went for all the marbles, we ended with none,” he wrote.

As the column was distributed among Republican moderates and Democrats, quills were sharpened on the Right for retribution. On Tuesday The Wall Street Journal dismissed Mr Frum as “the media’s go-to basher of fellow Republicans” and attacked him for “peddling bad revisionist history that would have been even worse politics”. On Thursday he was offered the chance to stay on at the think-tank on a non-salaried basis. He declined.

If tensions within the Republican movement were confined to think-tanks and the fringe it would amount to business as usual for a party that lost badly in the last two big election years. However, mainstream figures including the standard-bearers of the Republican Establishment are being forced to the right by purity tests on key issues and a groundswell of Tea Party activism that moderates fear could marginalise the party in the long term.

In Arizona yesterday Senator John McCain hit the campaign trail with Sarah Palin, his old running-mate, in an effort to head off a primary challenge from John Hayworth, a talk-show host who considers the Senator too soft on immigration, same-sex marriage and health reform, even though Mr McCain led Republican demands this week for the Bill to be repealed.

In Florida Charlie Crist, the once-popular Republican Governor, has been attacked relentlessly by Tea Party bloggers since supporting the Obama stimulus package last year. He faces defeat by Marco Rubio, a firebrand of the hard Right, at the midterm elections in November.

Among potential 2012 Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney has been forced to condemn the health reforms as an “historic usurpation of the legislative process” even though it is based largely on a Bill he shepherded into state law as Governor of Massachusetts. Mike Huckabee, until recently a favourite of social conservatives, slid back to also-ran status three months ago when a prisoner he released nine years ago went on a shooting spree.

The backlash against health reform has not yet descended to shooting but it turned so nasty this week that a succession of Republican leaders risked alienating Tea Party agitators to denounce it. Death threats and bricks — such as one thrown through the window of a district office of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter — have no place in politics, John Boehner, the House minority leader, told reporters.

No senior Republican has dared to criticise Mrs Palin for urging her supporters to “reload” and take aim at vulnerable Democrats, whose districts are identified with rifle crosshairs on her website.

This may be because, as Mr Frum said yesterday, “the elite isn’t leading any more; it’s trapped”. It is a trap that threatens moderate conservatism as a whole. If Mr Obama’s reforms prove more popular than anticipated Mr Frum and his allies must find a way to reassert control of their party or get used to irrelevance.

Killing the messenger for delivering bad news is a time honored tradition. However, it does not ever change the facts.

[cantstopthemusic]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=220474&p=4625624#p4625624

Zinnnnnnnnnng!