Today we learned that no less than 111 companies, universities, and unions received waivers that exempt them from participation in Obamacare. As Michelle Bachmann pointed out today in a press conference on Capitol Hill, this is because everybody knows that Obamacare is unaffordable, it kills jobs, and drives up the price of health care to the point that many employees will have to be dropped entirely from their employer's health care rolls.
But this is old news to conservatives. My question is where is party favorite Jeb Henserling and why is the girl, who GOP leadership passed over for him, out there doing all the heavy lifting on this? I guess railing against the single worst piece of legislation in modern history is beneath GOP leadership and should be left to the tea-party rabble like Bachmann. After all, after one publicly eviscerates the President over his signature bill, one can't expect to receive many invitations to hoity-toity DC cocktail parties, now can one?
13 comments:
Good grief, Ed. Kudos to her for holding a presser and pointing this out, but turning that into "everybody else sucks" is kind of a stretch, don't you think? They haven't even had the leadership voting yet.
I didn't say that everybody else sucks. That remains to be seen. It's just shaping up to be the old-school, go-along republicans trying to resist the new brand of conservatism of the tea party and a majority of republican voters. I'd like to be wrong but there remains a lot of big-spending, Bush republicans in congressional leadership positions.
I was engaging in some of the hyperbole that you like, Ed. ;-)
I only want everybody to at least let them take office in January before writing them off.
Remember, the old-guard Senators just surrendered to "Sen. Tea-party" (and hated social conservative) Jim Demint on earmarks.
I do enjoy a bit of hyperbole now and then, Bill.
I realize that for McConnell, earmarks are how business is conducted efficiently and that they make up only 0.002% of the budget, but according to Dick Morris, in 2007, the earmarks that Bush signed into law accounted for 20% of the deficit spending that year. That's not insignificant and eliminating them is more than symbolic.
I agree that intrenched republicans have shown signs of tacking rightward, though I believe it's being done reluctantly and out of self-preservation. That said, I'll reserve judgement until they prove me right sometime in the new year.
As only a few commentators have pointed out - Brit Hume notably - earmarks are part of the whole "log-rolling" culture of DC, whereby Rep. X votes for a bloated spending bill only because the "Rep. X Center for the Study of Seaslugs" is included in the bill. Multiply that by hundreds, and you get the bloated bill passing in the first place.
Bush's highway bill had something like 385 earmarks for crap just like what you just described. Sen Inhofe was on the floor this morning whining about Article 1 Section 9 giving congress every right to spend taxpayer money however it sees fit. But A1S9 doesn't say that. It's just how it's always been done. I doubt seriously that the founders meant for money to be taken by force from taxpayers from one state and spent on non-essential frivoloties for the benefit of taxpayers in another state. Inhofe might be another head that needs to be on the chopping block in 2012.
Does anyone think Bachmann is attractive?
She's easy on the eyes.
The average conservative female politician or commentator is almost always better looking than the average liberal equivalent. Not sure why this is true, but it is.
Bill, over at Yahoo answers I found this pearl of wisdom regarding the general unattractiveness of democrat women: "It has to do with the physical drain that being full of crap for so many years has on a person."
That said, Kirsten Powers is the liberal hottie we hate to love.
Speaking of hottie conservatives Bill, did you see where Megyn Kelly made GQ's Men of the Year issue? With very little makeup, she's even hotter than her normal hottness.
Did not see that, Ed. Some of the money babes on CNBC aren't at all bad either, in a non-political kind of way. I'm sure none of that has anything to do with their being on TV in the first place.
Roger Ailes does know how to pick 'em.
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