Tag Archives: GOP

medical news, national news, political news

Listen to one of your own, GOP, on 'Obamacare'

Brent Budowsky is singing Karl Rove’s praises.

And why not? Budowsky is an economist of some repute and is a former aide to the late, great U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas. He thinks Rove — aka “Bush’s Brain” — is spot on in telling his fellow Republicans to give their futile effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

It’s a loser. Any remote chance the GOP has of tossing the ACA aside is going to cost them dearly, especially when — in Budowsky’s eyes — the first person dies because he or she is denied affordable health insurance because Republicans have won their fight to repeal the ACA.

Karl Rove surrenders to ObamaCare

And why should the GOP high command listen to Rove?

Easy. The man’s a brilliant political strategist.

He helped engineer George W. Bush’s winning campaigns for Texas governor (in 1994) and two successful races for the presidency (in 2000 and 2004). The governor’s race should have been in the bag for the incumbent, the late Democrat Ann Richards. Rove came up with a strategy that held Bush to a tightly scripted line of specific issues and reforms he would enact if elected governor. He never veered off the script as he went on to defeat Richards.

The man knows a winning political cause and a losing cause as well as anyone.

As Budowsky writes in The Hill: “Rove’s surrender to ObamaCare, advising Republicans against pretending they would repeal ObamaCare, is politically very wise. Rove’s fear about what happens to Republicans if the court does overturn ObamaCare provisions and the world witnesses horror stories of Americans being hurt because of Republican anti-ObamaCare politics — without any Republican policy to undo the damage — is politically brilliant.

“Imagine daily stories on television about very ill Americans being stripped of healthcare, about children losing their insurance because they would no longer be covered by their parent’s policies, about Americans with preexisting conditions being thrown to the insurance wolves without ObamaCare, and about huge insurance premium increases that would punish many millions of Americans because of the Republican war against ObamaCare.”

Budowsky also predicts that the Supreme Court is going to uphold the ACA when it rules on its constitutionality before the end of the court’s current term.

Pay attention. Karl Rove might not be every American’s favorite operative/pundit/talking head. Howeve, he is wise to counsel his fellow Republicans to give up a fight they’re certain to lose.

 

national news, political news

Socialist could do HRC a huge favor

Bernie Sanders’s campaign for president next year is likely to produce a huge favor for the Democratic Party’s frontrunner, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Sanders is an unapologetic socialist. He’s an independent U.S. senator from Vermont. He’s going to attack Clinton from the left as the two of them seek their party’s presidential nomination.

The favor? It will be that Clinton will be seen as the mainstream candidate and — perhaps — more palatable to the vast middle-of-the-road sea of voters who dislike extremists on either end of the political spectrum.

Socialist to snap at Clinton’s heels

Republican candidates and members of the TEA party wing of the GOP try all the time to label Clinton as some kind of “closet socialist.” Well, she’ll be running for her party’s nomination against the real thing.

Sanders has no qualms about extolling the virtues of wealth redistribution, which is a socialist tenet. Clinton doesn’t say such things — out loud, at least. That doesn’t stop her fervent critics from hanging the socialist label on her.

So, look for Hillary Clinton to welcome Sanders’s attacks. She’ll parry them easily and possibly deprive her Republican foes a key weapon in their own arsenal against the probable Democratic presidential nominee.

 

political news

Rubio is right: Sexual orientation is no 'choice'

2 Comments

Sen. Marco Rubio wants to be president. To do that he’s got to sound reasonable.

The young Florida Republican, by golly, is starting to get some traction on the reasonableness bandwagon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/19/marco-rubio-gay-rights_n_7096180.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

One’s sexual orientation, he said today on “Face the Nation,” is not a choice. It’s who that person is.

Good call, senator.

He stops short of endorsing gay marriage, though. He believes marriage should be a union involving a man and a woman. He says he favors “traditional” marriage.

I am heartened, though, to understand that he does not buy into the tripe being tossed around that someone states a “preference” for being intimate with someone else. I’ve long believed sexual orientation — whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual — is part of a person’s DNA.

I’m glad to see that Marco Rubio understands it, too.

Now, if we can just get him to change his mind about normalizing relations with Cuba …

 

political news

Rubio joins growing GOP field for 2016

Marco Rubio is now running for president of the United States.

The freshman Republican U.S. senator from Florida has joined the swelling chorus of GOP voices seeking to take the White House back from those mean ol’ Democrats.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/marco-rubio-2016-presidential-bid-116914.html?hp=t1_r

What the Rubio candidacy is beginning to illustrate in even more stark terms is that Republicans are going to face the donnybrook while Democrats appear headed for a coronation of sorts when the parties convene their nominating conventions in the summer of ’16.

Those of us who’ve been around long enough remember when the reverse was true. Democrats carved each other up while Republicans rallied behind the suitable heir apparent.

Not this time.

Rubio joins a GOP primary campaign that already includes fellow Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas. Others — many others, in fact — are waiting in the wings. I keep hearing different numbers, but the roll call of Republican presidential candidates varies between 12 and 25. Hey, the more the merrier.

The Democrats? They’ve got their prohibitive frontrunner, Hillary Rodham Clinton. She has the deep pockets, the organization, the party machinery and some quite favorable poll numbers backing her up.

The Democratic Party is likely to anoint Clinton as its nominee.

The Republican Party is going to engage in a knock-down, drag-out brawl through the winter, into the spring and possibly right up until the GOP convention.

Some of us remember another time, era and set of circumstances that reversed the roles.

This campaign, from my perspective, is going to be much more fun to watch.

 

International news

Partisanship gone too far?

Barack Obama could have made this argument possibly long before now. Heck, maybe he has.

But now the president says partisan bickering over the merits of the Iran nuclear deal brokered with five other great powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran has gone too far.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-partisanship-over-iran-deal-gone-too-225234380–politics.html

He spoke at the Summit of the Americas, where he has made historic inroads in restoring relations with another longtime enemy, Cuba.

Back to Iran.

The deal seeks to scale back Iran’s nuclear development program. It also seeks to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb. Republicans universally seem opposed even to talking to Iran about such a deal. Some Democrats have expressed misgivings too. Let’s throw in the categorical objections of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and you have the makings of a donnybrook over a critical U.S. foreign policy initiative that in an earlier time might have enabled the president and his loyal opposition to speak with a single voice.

Those days are gone — at least while the current president occupies the White House.

You had The Letter signed by the 47 GOP senators urging Iran to reject a deal, which they stated might not survive once President Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, 2017. Yes, the letter sought to undermine U.S. negotiators.

I certainly understand the need for partisan principle to matter, to count for something. These issues of foreign policy, of difficult and complicated international negotiations need to above that kind of bickering.

Obama’s critics say he is guilty of diminishing U.S. standing in the world. Those very critics are doing that, and more, when they seek to ambush the president while he and his team are working to prevent an enemy nation from developing a weapon of mass destruction.

 

national news, political news

HRC needs to prove she's authentic

Authenticity.

That’s the one word, I believe, that sums up Hillary Rodham Clinton’s major hurdle as she begins her second quest for the presidency.

It starts once again on Sunday. She’ll convene some small-group sessions. She’ll talk to voters who about herself, which is what all politicians do when they discuss campaigns for public office.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-begins-her-entry-into-the-2016-presidential-race/2015/04/10/f5f08ef0-df9c-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html

I’m left to wonder, though. Just who is this person?

I also am going to venture a guess that a lot of Americans are going to seek to find the real Hillary Clinton, whoever she is.

The email kerfuffle and her delayed reaction to it just stokes the flames of those who think she’s a phony. She’s got all that big-time money backing her, yet she’s going to say that the Citizens United case — which allows corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians — needs to be overturned. She told us a while back she and her husband, the 42nd president, were “dead broke” when they left the White House in January 2001; well, a lot of Americans define “dead broke” differently than the way Hillary Clinton defined it.

Is she for real? Does she really connect with me, or you, or most Americans?

Her campaign begins once again in about 24 hours. She’s going to be the Target No. 1 of every Republican running, or thinking of running, for president in 2016. She’s going to draw fire from those on the far left wing base of her own Democratic Party who are looking for signs that she isn’t too cozy with Wall Street.

What’s more, on top of all this, she’s got the baggage she’ll be lugging around from her time as first lady, when the entire Republican Party establishment — and before we knew about the TEA party wing of the GOP — was out to get her husband tossed out of office. She drew her share of enemy fire during that time. Is she ready to take more of it?

Just who is the real Hillary Rodham Clinton?

We’re about to find out.

 

national news, political news

Sen. Paul: most interesting GOP candidate

I’ll lay my bet down now that Rand Paul is going to be the most interesting and provocative Republican running for president in 2016.

I didn’t like the U.S. senator from Kentucky when he first burst onto the scene. I like him better now. It’s not that I plan to vote for him next year if he gets the GOP nomination. He does have some interesting ideas to share with Americans.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-rand-paul-announces-2016-presidential-run-on-website/ar-AAaxxuJ

He’s already announced on his website that he’s going to run. He has an event planned later today in his home state to make official.

He wants to return the nation to the “principles of liberty and limited government.”

Well, damn! Isn’t that original?

Actually, though, his view of libertarianism encompasses a wide swath of issues.

He suggests favoring marijuana legalization. I’m wondering what he’s going to say down the line about assisted suicide and abortion. His foreign policy doctrine looks to be of an anti-war bent, unlike so many of the TEA party members of his party who seem all too willing to start dropping bombs and (please pardon this hideous euphemism) placing American “boots on the ground” to assist in every regional conflict on the planet.

Paul didn’t distinguish himself during the Senate Benghazi hearings when he scolded then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the confusion that erupted in the firefight at the U.S. consulate in Libya. “If I had been president,” Paul said, he would have fired Secretary Clinton on the spot.

I thought at that moment: Oh … please.

But the man’s occasional quirkiness and interesting take on domestic and international affairs has piqued my curiosity.

With that — run, Rand, run!

 

International news, national news, political news

GOP's letter to Iran? It's Obama's fault

You knew it would come to this, didn’t you?

Republican U.S. senators, trying to put some distance between themselves and what’s looking like a monumental cluster-bleep regarding The Letter that was sent to Iran regarding the nuclear negotiations, have done the impossible.

They’ve gone from irresponsible to ridiculous. They’re blaming President Obama for their decision to fire off that message to the Iranian mullahs, encouraging them to oppose any nuclear treaty that gets hammered out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/10/gop-obama-cotton-letter_n_6843204.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

Blame Obama! That’s the ticket!

Here’s how the Huffington Post, which I concede isn’t a friend of the GOP, reported it: “Those who support the letter — even some who didn’t add their names — deflected the blame. If it weren’t for Obama’s failure to consult lawmakers about the negotiations, or his threatened veto of a proposed bill to give Congress the final vote on a nuclear agreement, senators wouldn’t have had to speak out in the first place, they argued.

“’I think that, no doubt, the fact that the president, you know, issued a veto threat on a very common-sense piece of legislation, probably evoked, you know, a good deal of passion,’ Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Huffington Post Tuesday. Corker, who is leading the push for a veto-proof majority on the bill to grant Congress oversight of a nuclear agreement, did not sign letter, which was organized by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). Nevertheless, he showed no signs of ill will toward his junior colleague.

“’No, no, no,’ Corker responded, when asked if he was concerned Cotton’s letter would cost the bill much-needed Democratic votes.”

There’s more on the link attached to this post, but you get the idea.

The Gang of 47 sent The Letter because President Obama didn’t consult with Republican lawmakers about the negotiations, the GOP line of defense goes.

I applaud Sen. Corker for remaining part of a dwindling Reasonable Republican Senate Caucus; he was one of seven GOP senators who didn’t sign The Letter.

However, his assertion — along with those who did sign the document — that this is Barack Obama’s fault is about as “funny” as the statement by GOP congressional aides reported in The Daily Beast that the senators were being “cheeky,” that they meant The Letter to be something of a joke.

I’m trying real hard right now to pick up the sound of laughter. I don’t hear anything.

 

national news, political news

Amazing turnaround on race

2 Comments

UPDATE: This just in … House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., agreed late to commit to attending the Selma, Ala., rally commemorating the march that helped spark approval of the Voting Rights Act 50 years ago.

***

Virtually no Republican leaders will take part in ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma, Ala., civil rights march?

How can that be?

The Party of Abraham Lincoln needs to have representation at this event. Doesn’t it?

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/gop-leaders-to-skip-selma-event-115801.html?ml=po

The march helped produce the Voting Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat who pushed it through Congress with help from his Republican allies. Indeed, the Democratic Party — particularly in the South — was well-known to resist civil-rights legislation. LBJ was warned by his Southern Democratic friends that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act would cost the party dearly in terms of Southern support. It did.

Fifty years later, it’s now Republicans who are staying away from events to commemorate the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The GOP won’t be totally absent. An estimated 23 Republican members of the House and Senate will attend. Good for them.

Are the party leaders who should be there — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — all racists? I don’t believe that for a moment. One key GOP leader, though, really and truly needs to be there. That would be House Majority Whip Gary Scalise, who spoke to a David Duke-sponsored political event before being elected to the House; he’s since disavowed that appearance and has declared that he harbors no racial bias — but he needed to commit to this event.

The allegiances of the two major parties appear to have turned rather dramatically with regard to race relations.

Amazing.

national news, political news

Ex-Gov. Palin is wrong — again — on Obama

Sarah Palin has cast this remarkable spell over the nation’s political conservative movement.

With so many qualified public officials able to stand and deliver cogent messages, the nation’s Republican Party — particularly its far right wing — is transfixed by the former half-term Alaska governor who simply doesn’t know of which she speaks.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/sarah-palin-president-obama-radical-islam-isil-cpac-115565.html?hp=c2_3_b3

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Palin stood before the attendees and actually inferred that President Obama is ignoring the threat posed by the Islamic State terrorists.

What in the world is she thinking?

“Wake up, Mr. President,” Palin said on Thursday at CPAC’s gathering. “While Christians bow our heads and pray for you, radical Islamists want to cut off your head.”

Wake up? She wants the president to wake up? Hasn’t she been paying attention?

I know the answer. She hasn’t. She’s been busy listening to the sound of her own voice while ignoring more important voices within her party and certainly ignoring the spoken words and deeds of the incumbent president who’s been fighting the terrorists every day.

Palin parrots the GOP talking points about Obama allegedly not taking the Islamist terrorist threat seriously. Why? Because he’s instructed his administration to avoid using the words “Islamist terrorist.” There you have it. If you don’t say the right words, you’re not actually fighting the bad guys.

What an utter crock of moose dookey!

I had hoped to remain silent about the former governor. I cannot let stand her ridiculous assertions whenever she utters them. Palin did so again today at the CPAC meeting.

Having gotten this little tantrum out of my system, I’ll take another from break monitoring Palin’s rhetorical nonsense.