I hope Mike Flynn is correct.
[NOTE: Origins of the French phrase here.]
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Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
March 21st, 2010 at 4:18 pm
I’m disappointed in Stupak.
I need to turn off the TV.
I am so mad.
Off to paint my ceiling with music blasting…
March 21st, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Imagine the combined political impact of the Volstead Act and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. We are at a tipping point, this is what pushes the momentum over.
Those behind this monstrosity were looking for change, and they’ll get it, good and hard. It’s not the change they were looking for, though.
March 21st, 2010 at 4:27 pm
I remember the Catastrophic Health Care reversal of 1988-89.
I also remember the 1994 elections, and the subsequent recision of federal welfare.
It isn’t over.
March 21st, 2010 at 4:28 pm
All the signs are there for a Mike Flynn ending. The only question I have is whether the Dems know something we do not, do they have some card up their sleeve? Pity November is so far away, that gives them 8 months to tamper with the electoral process. Or are they figuring the public is so busy watching football and Desperate Housewives that they can destroy liberty in the US without being noticed?
As you said Neo, these are interesting times.
March 21st, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Caving for a legally worthless Executive Order. How pathetic.
March 21st, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Both pathetic, and a transparent sham.
Maybe that’s what they meant by “transparency.”
March 21st, 2010 at 4:38 pm
So he sells his soul for an executive order. Reminds me of someone else who sold out for 30 pieces of silver a while back. Didn’t turn out to well for him, and I don’t think it will turn out well for Stupak.
March 21st, 2010 at 5:04 pm
At least that other guy got 30 pieces of silver. This Stupak guy? not so much.
March 21st, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I can remember civics lessons on how a bill becomes a law. I guess they now have to revise all the schoolbooks. They will probably be about 2,300 pages now.
March 21st, 2010 at 5:32 pm
I think the American people are awake, now, and they are watching with growing anger. Perhaps the elections of 2006 and 2008 were not a normal political shift where the voters punish one party and reward the other. Perhaps they were showing a sea change in the electorate’s attitudes.
The Zero thought he had a mandate, but he has managed to offend every constituency that does not think it will qualify for other people’s stuff. Drs. will begin to go Galt. Businesses will go under, or cancel their insurance plans. It appears that no human activity is beneath our ‘wise governing elite’s’ notice. Regulating sport fishing?
The next several months will be very interesting. I wonder if Americans will tolerate canceling the elections. Imagine these guys a as a ‘ permanent wise governing elite.’
March 21st, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Flynn: Buckle up, because if they manage to cobble together enough votes to pass the Senate Health Bill today, we’re set for weeks and perhaps months of a constitutional and political crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.
In our lifetimes, really? How about the Clinton impeachment? (Watergate?)
If the Right overplays its hand like they did in 1998, they could be in for quite a surprise in November.
March 21st, 2010 at 6:50 pm
If the Right overplays its hand like they did in 1998, they could be in for quite a surprise in November.
Be careful what you wish for, gs. You won’t get any Tim McVeigh to bail you out this time. This is going to be nicest revolution you ever saw in your life.
That’s one thing I think we can all take a moment to remember right now. As much as it hurts to be treated with this kind of contempt, we must be nice, be strong, and be focused. This is ours to win, now. Focus your anger into a smile and do what it takes to win in November. It’s step one.
Pass it on. Pinky swear.
March 21st, 2010 at 6:50 pm
I should have included the Y2K election in my previous comment.
March 21st, 2010 at 7:06 pm
gs: Watergate? Clinton impeachment? 2000 election? I went through all of those—on the Democrat side—and there’s no comparison. This is deeper, and the issues more basic, global, and far-reaching.
March 21st, 2010 at 7:06 pm
I see red meat. This is going to be fun.
March 21st, 2010 at 7:09 pm
NNC, when you have a moment, would you expand on that thought, please?
March 21st, 2010 at 7:20 pm
gs: I believe a great many of my posts have explained why I think the Obama administration and the Pelosi Congress are different from what came before, and worse. Short version is that they are more deeply duplicitous about their policies and their agenda, and are out to remake America in an image that combines part European social welfare state and part Chavez-like Venezuelan “democratic” dictatorship. This has absolutely no relation to Watergate and Nixon’s operatives committing “dirty tricks” by breaking into that office and covering it up, no relation to Clinton lying under oath about his sex life, and no relation to the Supreme Court legally settling an election that was to all intents and purposes a dead heat.
From a previous post of mine:
See also this:
March 21st, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Liberals have been in charge of the budgets in California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and New Jersey for years, and look at the disaster they have presided over. There is no free lunch. Passing this huge entitlement in the middle of a recession when Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are on the ropes is insane. It’s a shame that lefties in the House from those failed states can pull us all underwater. Watch the stock and bond markets tomorrow. It could be interesting.
I am really pissed off. I wish I had some confidence in the ability of the RNC to organize for November.
March 21st, 2010 at 8:04 pm
The Tonkin Resolution. Barely within my lifetime, the McCarthy era (my parents were refugees, and for a time they were scared that they had walked into what they were fleeing).
****************
Except for very intermittent visits, nnc, I am a new reader. Thanks for your response.
I view the situation by three criteria.
The legitimacy of the bill. Dubious, but, arguably, barely legitimate. I would be pleased to see a procedural derailment or a SCOTUS annulment (if at all possible, not 5-4), but I won’t take to the streets if the bill stands.
The effects of the bill. Yuk. (My Romneycare just went up 15%.) Otoh, I am in the Obama-is-Bush-on-steroids camp. I see the country headed for stagnation at best, barring wild cards like Reaganism or the Internet’s proliferation; I have hope they will materialize. I concede that the bill is a negative development, especially for biotech, in an already negative situation–but not irredeemably so.
The context of the bill. Suspicion of Obama’s underlying motivations is warranted. Yet, however grudgingly, he has continued to stabilize the financial system and he has not withdrawn from the Mideast. I’d like to believe Conrad Black’s recent remark that this single President cannot do irretrievable damage to the nation.
*************
Which brings me to my fundamental concern. I’d be much more hopeful if conservatives (& libertarians) looked in the mirror and asked why this center-right nation replaced them with a strongly liberal government. Unfortunately I see the GOP establishment counting on Democrat overreaching to restore them to power. Returning from Obama back to a Bush type would be an improvement in degree, but not in kind.
March 21st, 2010 at 8:12 pm
gs: I’ve seen a great many conservatives and libertarians looking in that mirror. I hear talk and read about it all the time. Four reasons (there are probably more, but these are the ones that come quickly to mind):
(1) allowing and/or not noticing the long Gramscian march of the left through our educational system and the press.
(2) in recent years abandoning fiscal conservatism and becoming “liberals lite,” as well as corrupt in various ways.
(3) the primary process in 2008 allowed a weak candidate disliked even by many Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians to be the presidential nominee. Many of them were unenthusiastic enough to not turn out to vote.
(4) underestimating the enemy—thinking the Democrats would play fair. Collegiality and all that.
March 21st, 2010 at 8:29 pm
nnc, I do see ‘green shoots’ but question whether they will bloom if the establishment can get by with business as usual.
I speak as a furious former Republican-in-all-but-name who feels deliberately and cynically misled for a period of years. One usually is more hostile toward a betrayer than toward an opponent or an honorable enemy.
************
I agree with you that the long-term effects of Obamacare are more pernicious than the aftereffects of at least some of the crises I mentioned.
Then again, today’s world differs materially from my expectations in 1990; ditto for 1990 and 1970.
March 21st, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Suspicion of Obama’s underlying motivations is warranted. Yet, however grudgingly, he has continued to stabilize the financial system and he has not withdrawn from the Mideast.
By “not withdrawing from the Mideast”, do you happen to mean “stopping support to Israel”?
March 21st, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Gray, sarcasm like yours threatens to make the participatory political Internet unreadable.
I have restrained the impulse to respond in kind, but I will not legitimize your question with an answer.
March 21st, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Mike Flynn ending?
I could see a “Vince Flynn” ending, not that I’d consider that a good thing.
March 22nd, 2010 at 1:07 am
Gray, did it ever occur to you that Obama is withdrawing from the mideast SLOWLY. He gave dates for the withdrawal of our combat troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. You don’t think that is a green light for the bad guys?
Obama hates America, period. His constant apologies for America, denial of our uniqueness, his America hating associates, Michelle’s comments, preference for leftist and anti-American dictators over democrat governments and movements makes this inescapably clear.
Give me another explanation of the above, I would like to hear it.
March 22nd, 2010 at 1:13 am
Sorry, Gray, I meant to add to your post not attack it. I got confused over who was writing what.
March 22nd, 2010 at 1:26 am
Stabilizing the financial system? Obama?
Unsustainable debt is NOT stabilizing.
Government jobs are NOT stabilizing.
I have lived through this process before. I know where it leads. You can call it stable, if you wish. When you’re at the bottom you’re really stable. No more falling.
March 22nd, 2010 at 2:37 am
BfV, I’ll try to give another interpretation. Only in the spirit of brainstorming; if I really knew the answers, I could become a very wealthy man. I’m drooping so maybe we can resume this tomorrow.
I refuse to be an apologist for Obama, but will note that he has reinforced us in Afghanistan and is supplying UAVs to Pakistan. Hopefully he will right his ship like Bill Clinton did, but I’m not counting on it.
Obama comes from a broken home and his mother really had an antipathy to her heritage. The way he relates to America is extremely atypical. Even if he wasn’t raised to love this country, that doesn’t mean he hates it.
He is so unusual that our political system had not developed immunity to someone like him. By the end of the primaries, Hillary had taken his measure–too late. He breezed through the political gauntlet, abetted by Hillary’s arrogance, McCain’s flakiness, and the Republican record.
My gut feeling is that Obama is more fruitfully viewed as a consequence than as a cause. The real issue, IMO, is what is so awry in the country that we turned to someone like him.
In other words, I think that what ails America is systemic. I’m not seeking refuge in moral equivalence–the pathology manifests differently in different parts of society–, but I’d be very surprised if objective future historians divided us up into good guys and bad guys.
March 22nd, 2010 at 7:56 am
I followed the link to Flint’s article and his link to the Healthcare story from the ’80′s. I saw in the crowd a woman who reminded me of my mother shouting out “You were supposed to represent the people” and somehow her indignation mixed with the weight of this present state of affairs made me weep uncontrollably.
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:01 am
gs,
No time for much, here, but I’ll make a few points off the top of my head.
Obama may in some sense be a consequence, but he also is taking his position as a consequence as a point from which to make an unprecedented pivot. And that’s also part of the reason why this is a constitutional crisis. The episodes you and others have mentioned–the Clinton impeachment, the Nixon years, and others–all have the common characteristic that they were situations contemplated by the Founders, and for which those estimable gentlemen provided constitutional remedies. Impeachment is in the Constitution, along with the reasons for which it becomes a remedy, for example. The McCarthy era played itself out without a tremendous disruption of the body-politic, and no changes to the constitutional order were required. This new situation, however, plays itself out on a stage that Obama, himself, set as being a transformation. He has said, himself, that he wants to change the Constitution, completely transform its basis on negative rights (what the government shall not do) to one based on positive rights (what the government may, and indeed willdo). There is no precedent for this, and the Constitution did not contemplate it. It will involve, and as we see already involves, governing with a majority whose stated goal is to ignore and over-ride the will and consent of the governed. That’s a constitutional crisis.
My husband also points out that the Founders placed in the Constitution provisions to guard against the tyranny of the majority. They do not seem to have considered in similar fashion how to guard against the tyranny of the minority.
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:03 am
Incidentally, as I said in my post above, those thoughts are off the top of my head. I’d be happy to have anyone comment, expand, or correct what I’ve said!
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:14 am
I admire Charles Krauthammer greatly. I’ve noticed for some weeks that he wouldn’t hold out any hope that HCR would be defeated. He has stated, without flourish, that it would pass. Last evening, before the final vote, he stated again that it would pass. Then he said, in his undecorated fashion, that it will destroy the country.
I hated hearing that, but I was impressed.
Get ready, gang. We have not yet begun to fight.
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:27 am
It may also be a constitutional crisis in that the HCR bill requires citizens to engage in a specific sort of commerce–the purchase of health insurance. There is no provision anywhere in the Constitution for a requirement that citizens purchase anything.
March 22nd, 2010 at 11:36 am
betsybounds, thanks for your replies. I too am in a scurry to do other things.
Although ‘positive rights’ are a malignant invention, they’re a plausible extension of “when somebody hurts, government has got to move”.
Afaic Obama is Bush on steroids. Obama is accelerating things that Bush set in motion.
Until I believe I am not getting suckered into returning the Bush types to power, I refuse to get fired up against Obama. My vote & donations for Scott Brown were for divided government, not for the Republican Party.
March 22nd, 2010 at 5:51 pm
I have restrained the impulse to respond in kind, but I will not legitimize your question with an answer.
What?
I didn’t ask a controversial question. I asked if your “withdraw from the mideast” meant “stopping support for Israel.”
It seems like a reasonable question; not sarcastic in any way.
Why would that question be so threatening to you?