bipartisanship

Posted at 9:40pm on Mar. 6, 2008 Sen. Ron Wyden leads bi(tri?)partisan group of 5 Ds, 6 Rs, 1 I in fighting for same old government-controlled health care

Take a bow, Sens. Alexander, Grassley, Crapo, Bennett, Coleman, Gregg, Wyden, Carper, Landrieu, B. Nelson, Stabenow, and Lieberman

By Jeff Emanuel

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the primary sponsor of bipartisan Senate Bill 334 (the “Healthy Americans Act”), has spent the last few days on the stumping for his plan to “fix” America’s health care system.

Burdened with the mouthful of a title "A bill to provide affordable, guaranteed private health coverage that will make Americans healthier and can never be taken away,” S. 334 includes an ‘individual mandate,’ or legal requirement that every individual purchase at least a minimum amount of coverage, though enforcement is left up to the States, which are directed to come up with a means of ensuring that the uninsured are penalized.

Interestingly, Sen. Wyden uses this ‘individual mandate’ portion of the bill to present an olive branch (or a level of government-backed legitimacy) to practitioners and recipients of holistic and spiritual medicine, as S. 334 officially excuses people who are “opposed to health plan coverage for religious reasons, including an individual who declines health plan coverage due to a reliance on healing using spiritual means through prayer alone” from compliance with the mandate.

Individual states are also allowed to determine whether complying with this mandate would constitute a “hardship” for impoverished families and individuals, and to make allowance for them.

Read on.

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Posted at 7:05pm on Jan. 29, 2008 I *Will* Vote For John McCain - But I Will Be Under No Illusions About It

By Martin A. Knight

I will, without hesitation, pull the lever for John McCain if he happens to be the man whose name is at the top of the ticket. It's not even a close contest - he is head and shoulders above Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and it would be irresponsible to do otherwise with troops on the field.

However I am not going to lie to myself and say that I voted Republican for President; I would be perfectly aware that I had just voted "Bipartisan" as opposed to "Democrat". I'm not going to be deluded enough to think the McCain White House would be anything other than the high altar to compromise and accommodation - the "New Tone™" with a surfeit of testosterone.

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Posted at 10:50am on Jan. 20, 2008 McCain's "Electability": Will It Survive Contact With The General Election?

By Martin A. Knight

Let me first of all say that I would vote for McCain in November if he is the candidate of the GOP. I will also advise everyone here, even if you would not vote for McCain, Huckabee or Romney, not to stay home and allow the remaining Republicans on the ballot to go down to defeat because you're not too happy about the guy at the top. The Presidency is just one office. There are many thousands more that also matter.

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Posted at 2:00am on Jan. 19, 2008 Arnold Schwarzenegger apologizes for being a Republican

The Risk of a "Glamour Pick" for Office

By Jeff Emanuel

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R? Yes, but apologetically) sat down with the L.A. Times yesterday and apologized -- deeply and from the bottom of his heart -- for being a Republican, citing "political inexperience" as his excuse for having espoused semiconservative ideals and principles during his first campaign and in the early years of his Governorship.

The man who rode into the Governor's mansion four years ago on a wave of dissatisfaction with former Governor Gray Davis and the budget crisis he wrought was, by all accounts, sober in his reflection on the last few years in office, telling Times writers and editors "that he now regrets a number of the policies he championed in his early days in office and acknowledges his own rhetoric was at times overheated and naive."

Now, after enough time as a member of the Establishment, the man who once championed himself as the antidote to the woes brought on California by that Establishment is showing the effects of a hard-earned lesson in politics and governance -- that it's easier to go along and to get along than it is to stick to principle and to fight for change -- and has accordingly dropped almost all of the conservative, change-centered, state-saving rhetoric and stated principle that inspired Californians to twice elect him to the state's highest office.

Please do read on.

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Posted at 3:46pm on Jan. 17, 2008 When will the GOP leadership learn that, to the Democrats, "bipartisanship" means total capitulation?

By Jeff Emanuel

On the heels of a meeting between Democrat and Republican leaders about a forthcoming economic stimulus package, Capitol Hill's major newspapers featured -- on their covers -- photographs of jubilant Democrats accompanied by fawning, subservient Republicans (see images at right for examples).

Though no caving in was done yesterday, the GOP's Congressional leadership still appears to be laboring, at least to some degree, under the equally false impressions that (a) so-called "bipartisanship" is possible in Congress without fully capitulating to the Democrats' demands, and (b) GOP leaders will ever, ever receive credit from the media and from their counterparts across the aisle for compromising on issues of importance and for reaching across the aisle in good faith and working together with the Ds.

As a year and change in the minority should have taught the GOP's current House leadership, there is no "common" or "middle" ground between conservative goals and the desires of the Democrats which the latter will ever accept as being valid. In other words, the only way that Democrats will accept an act or solution as being a "compromise" or as being "bipartisan" is if it involves a complete rejection of principles by conservatives, and a wholehearted acceptance of the Democrat position on that issue.

Read on.

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Posted at 11:43am on Jan. 17, 2008 Trip Down Memory Lane: John McCain & the Bush Tax Cuts

By Martin A. Knight

Over the past few days, many McCain supporters have regaled us with their own unique remembrances of John McCain's opposition to President Bush's tax cuts from the campaign in 2000 and afterwards, after Bush was inaugurated. According to them, McCain never used the Democrats' Tax Cuts for the Rich™ class warfare rhetoric to justify his opposition and instead opposed them because there were no attendant spending cuts to go with it.

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Posted at 1:40pm on Jan. 8, 2008 Preview of a McCain Presidency : Schwarzenegger in California

By Martin A. Knight

Arnold is the primary source of heartburn for California Republicans. From his going around calling himself "post-partisan", his stated desire to see Democratic approval numbers up - even at the expense of his "fellow" Republicans, his very Lefty views and policies on the environment and healthcare, and all the way back to hiring a very partisan former Executive Director of the California Democratic Party to be his Chief of Staff, as sure as anything, the man is on course to be the worst thing that could have ever happened to the state party that produced Ronald Reagan.

And to be perfectly honest, for me the Republican candidate that I believe would give us an Administration at the national level that would be most like that of the obstensibly Republican Schwarzenegger in California is John McCain.

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