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No vote on health care reform — 43 Comments

  1. neo: “The GOP leadership isn’t leading–and that “leadership” includes both Ryan and Trump, the latter of whom at least has the excuse of having never been in government.”

    The two men have been working eighteen hours a day on this for the last four weeks and that’s not leadership? Trump has been more involved than any modern President I’ve observed. Ryan gets denounced regularly but I see him as dong all he can to get something DONE. When 30 people can thwart any progress I guess it is pretty frustrating for him.

    neo: “They should have come to a better compromise or at least figured out a more effective way to twist arms.”

    Can you provide some details on what a better compromise would have been?

    As usual, the Freedom Caucus thinks they are heroes for not compromising their principles. It’s going to be the same when it comes to tax reform. A huge scrum that may not get over the goal line either.

    The Dems now have a good chance to take over in 2018. The Freedom Caucus has made the perfect the enemy of the good and damaged both the party and Trump.

  2. They all should have listened to Boehner:

    “I shouldn’t have called it repeal and replace because that’s not what’s going to happen,” said Boehner at the giant annual confab of the [Feb 25, 2017] Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. “They’re basically going to fix the flaws and put a more conservative box around it.”

    “In the 25 years that I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever one time agreed on what a healthcare proposal should look like. Not once.”

    As Boehner concluded, “Most of the Affordable Care Act, the framework, is going to stay there.”

    Emphasis is mine.

  3. My prediction:

    Nothing more related to health care will happen.

    Even as we speak the democrat party is working on the reason to explain why the coming collapse of obamacare is the direct fault the evil republican party. This explanation will be accepted by the (hurting) public. Republications will shy away and say nothing as they will fear to be called racist.

    The democrat party will take both the house and senate in 2018. They will pass a single payer system.

    President Trump will veto the bill.

    The bill will return to congress when the veto will be overridden.

    Single payer will become the law of the land.

    Mission accomplished.

  4. To me the problem is that the establishment republicans haven’t figured out that they lost the election. They’re still trying to lead from their moderate position by just tweaking things a little here and there and adding a few more government dollars to a failing system. Boehner was forced to resign because that’s what he did!

    The people did not throw out the democrats in a historic election that no one predicted, or could believe after it happened, just to get a bunch of democrat-lite policies. The people did not defeat 15 other republicans just to get the same policies that most of them espoused.

    It’s Ryan that’s letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. He said he needed to have a 3 step process and it needed to be done one at a time. Why not wait a while and do it all at once? No one trusts the establishment to do what they promise because they have a history of promises not kept. You need credibility for people to trust you with one fifth of the economy.

    Obviously things are not bad enough yet. Just wait a while longer…..they will be!

  5. Michael – There’s a bigger chance that you’re right than wrong….unfortunately!

  6. Oh good grief. This is round one. It is a process; a marathon more than a sprint.

    I have already commented that the GOP is different from the lock step Pelosi/Reid cabal that was the Dimocrat party. There are different opinions, and they are strongly held. I thought that was a good thing. Those differences have to be negotiated. That used to go on across the aisle in the good old days of Reagan and Tip O’Neill. Now it has to be intramural.

    Campaign rhetoric got ahead of reality. I guess this is the first time in history that has happened. So, reality reared its head as it always does sooner or later. At least no one looked the American people in the eye and told them “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your health care plan; if you like your Doctor, you can keep your Doctor”. Nor has anyone said, “we will have to pass the bill to know what is in the bill”.

    What they did was imply, or promise, an unrealistic time line. Again, I have said; “get it right; that is more important than getting it quickly”. I stick by that.

    Dims and media will have a field day for awhile. Pass a meaningful tax bill, unleash the economy, get the SCOTUS started in the right direction, and let them chew on that while you continue to work on healthcare.

  7. PS I really get disgusted with all of the criticism of Ryan. He is a good man. He was drafted into an nigh impossible job. See my comments above about the differences between the GOP Caucus and the Reid/Pelosi Cabal. Is there a better choice for the job? Make your nominations of someone who can bring moderates and conservatives together.

    Not a single critic has a clue as to how to do the job any better than Ryan. But, talk is cheap. It is especially cheap as an anonymous poster on the internet.

  8. As us rednecks say, “You can fix stupid.” and most any real attempt to repair Obamacare would end up as big of a disaster as the coming Obamacare disaster.

    I am thinking everyone in the GOP knew which way they were going to vote as this thingy came out of the box and they were all going through the motions so they, Congress and Trump can now say we took action right away but, as they point fingers at the other guy, it just wasn’t in the cards.

    So now everyone takes a breath, blames everyone else and for now we move on. Hopefully we will have a new member of the Supreme Court in a few days and when that happens Trump will have fulfilled his obligation to me. That was really why I voted for him and about all I thought might happen by now.

    Trump has kind of exceeded my expectations so it will be interesting see what happens next.

  9. This hurts the Republicans in Congress much more than it hurts Trump. I have long suspected the Republican leadership is basically full of shit when it comes to eliminating program in D.C., and this is just the latest example.

    In any case, this may today have been the optimal outcome- the ACA exchanges are doomed without change, and the Democrats still own that program lock, stock, and barrel. Today’s failure won’t change that. We will revisit this issue next Spring.

  10. “To me the problem is that the establishment republicans haven’t figured out that they lost the election.”

    Yeah. Well, they certainly have not yet, have they.

    Get this from a Breitbart opinion article, “explaining” why ObamaCare cannot be outright repealed:

    “The biggest hurdle in overcoming the constitutional minority protections for overreaching legislative constructs is the Senate. The Senate is structurally built around a process that requires minority consideration to pass law. “

    Gosh … what process is the senate structurally built around in order to preserve “the constitutional minority protections”?

    Could they author possibly mean “C-L-O-T-U-R-E”?

    Is that the effen problem? Sanctuary! Santuary!!!

    “60 votes.” They are going to board us on the cattle cars to serfdom for the sake of 60 cloture votes? ‘Cause you know we just gotta keep things moving moving moving in the chamber and cannot pause for debate wars and hard feelings.

    Of course, technically speaking, the Senators could, you know, let the filibuster threatening sons of bitches actually get up and talk until they cannot talk anymore. And then vote.

    But no, they want to preserve the right of languidly lifting a finger and indicating the they are threatening to do what they actually don’t have the will, drive, or stamina to do.

    As in:

    “You cannot have this vote! Because I will take to the floor (not really) and exercise my courtesy privilege of speaking at length until I cannot speak more. And because you cannot allow such a waste of precious Senate time over such a trivial matter, you cannot have a vote.”

    No, the Republic dare not waste 3 days of Senate time letting Chuckie shout himself hoarse and then collapse in actually exercising his Senate privilege – that is “privilege”, you know. No they cannot even get that far.

    Of course there are reportedly four Republican senators who don’t really want it repealed completely anyway.

    This country – as it works now – deserves to sink. It’s a ship of fools and their physically dysfunctional clients, who are strangling everyone who doesn’t enjoy living as a termite hauling their sins around on his back. I am almost looking forward to when it happens.

    The Freedom Caucus may have some responsibility for this, but why could it not have been repealed whole cloth?

    Oh yeah …

  11. I’m with Irv. The Freedom Caucus does have a health care plan, it’s known as a free market system. Ryan et al oppose that system because they don’t want to jeopardize their tenure with the political fallout that the dems and MSM will heap upon them. Boehner admitted that to be the case in the quote above.

    When Obamacare collapses, the Republicans will get the blame and the LIVs will lap it up.

    Single payer is now assured. It’s just a matter of when not if.

  12. I’m more with Oldflyer on this. There is an element with the Freedom Caucus that thinks its principles are so self evident that they don’t need to be explained or sold to the folks on the ground. And all too many people latched onto one of Trump’s campaign promises without seeing how they would work together with other promises they didn’t care so much about. (I also agree with him about Ryan.)

    Maybe our society has come to believe so strongly in its failures that people need to latch onto utopian dreams to except themselves from our collective guilt. We don’t simply try to live by our principles and let others judge us by what they see. We have to preach and scream. I read this Powerliine link to an article on Putin and how we failed to see what was happening in Russia. Caldwell mentions that there were 3 big mistakes we made in dealing with Russia: the 2nd and 3rd were the Pussy Riots and turning the Sochi Olympics into a gay rights protest.
    I’ve long thought that these were huge mistakes, but they aren’t much different than the trannie bathroom rights things we are seeing here. The US has a long history of coping with chaos. Other countries don’t, and we ignore this at our peril.

  13. They should have done tax reform first. The economic agenda of corporate tax reform, encouraging investment in US manufacturing is more critical in the short term. If we can’t get the economy growing at 3% or more, we couldn’t afford the AHCA any more than we can afford the ACA.
    It was a fools errand by the Freedom Caucus to believe the senate Republicans were or are going to significantly roll back the left’s gains
    The rest of this year needs to be focused on economic growth.

  14. Very interesting take by Reihan Salam — “Don’t Blame the Freedom Caucus, The House’s hard-liners didn’t sink the American Health Care Act. The bill’s failures belong to Paul Ryan alone.”:

    When Mark Meadows, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters on Thursday night that he was “desperately trying to get to ‘Yes,’ ” he was telling the truth. Ryan and the rest of the House GOP leadership have been trying and failing to strong-arm the HFC and other Republicans into swallowing shabbily crafted legislation that no one really understands. As strange as it might seem, it is the Freedom Caucus that has been fighting for a more deliberative, thoughtful approach that might yield a more coherent set of reforms.

    More details in the article on the process involved in all this. This, in particular, caught my attention because Obamacare’s regulations do indeed seem the biggest problem:

    Conservatives have long seen Obamacare’s regulations as the biggest problem with the law, so it’s no wonder the Freedom Caucus wants to undo them. Ryan has steadfastly refused to budge on making big regulatory changes, on the grounds that you couldn’t get that done under the rules of budget reconciliation. Well, lo and behold, the Senate parliamentarian has made it clear that there really is scope to make sweeping regulatory changes under reconciliation rules. That news infuriated HFC members, and it sent Ryan scrambling to see if he could push through some last-minute changes to his bill, which got uglier and uglier by the hour.

  15. Sorry. Oldflyer: Ryan is the problem. He is leading from behind too. He is the flipping Speaker, the Leader who should know how to lead but does not. He is just a little boy from Janesville. He has never accomplished anything in the House. He got this silly rep as a wonk, was pulled into the limelight by Romney, and has floundered about ever since. Greatness was thrust upon him, but he is simply not up to it.

  16. First of all I do not understand the rush on overhauling obamacare. There are other important issues such as getting Gorsuch nominated, doubling down on the travel ban, and ending the rebellion of sanctuary cities and states, streamlining the tax code, and purging the bureaucracies.

    Secondly, Ryan probably is a nice man and good neighbor; but his past ‘wonky’ math on budget control and deficit reduction were laughable. I am not a politician or a lawyer (redundant for the most part) but this seems rather simple to me. Set an expiration date for obamacare, then take away the individual mandate, give the states latitude in determining what works best locally, and abolish regulations that make healthcare more expensive that it should be.

  17. I have not seen a. Nomination to replace Ryan. Where were they when he was begged to take the job? Should have done taxes first. Brilliant hindsight​.

  18. I have to say that I agree Michael (5:44), Irv (5:49)and Geoffrey Britain (7:14).

    But then Obamacare was always, from its inception, designed to fail. It’s point was to fail and so wreck what was left of the private sector health care market that it would pave the way for single payer.
    The establishment republicans in congress are and always have been on board with Obamacare and single payer.

    They had seven years, SEVEN YEARS to think about and develop a replacement plan. They tried to stop Trump’s nomination, but he was nominated. Then they thought that he would never be elected. But to everyone’s shock and dismay he was. Now with control of the House, the Senate, and the White house, they all of a sudden reveal that repealing Obamacare won’t be easy and we have nothing ready in place to replace it with? Bullshit!

    Ryan voted 60+ times to repeal it when Obama was in office, it even says that on Drudge, top left. The others voted to repeal it too. But then they knew Obama would veto anything they sent him. Thus it was easy to pretend that they were rock ribbed conservatives to the rubes, er their constituents. When in reality they are simply the dumber, more cowardly and chickenshit part of the deep state ruling oligarchy.

    Ryan’s bill didn’t repeal and replace, it tinkered around the edges. Let’s take a look. (Paraphrased from this article.)

    Any good from tax breaks was more than offset by:
    1. its failure to repeal Obamacare’s regulations and price controls.
    2. Two particularly insidious Obamacare regulations are guaranteed issue and community ratings. Guaranteed issue forces health insurance companies to issue a health insurance policy to anyone who applies for coverage. Be they an obese couch potato or an athlete. They pay the same.

    3. Obamacare’s individual mandate was put in place to ensure that guaranteed issue and community ratings would not drive health insurance companies out of business. Rather than repealing guaranteed issue and community ratings, the House Republicans’ plan forces those who go longer than two months without health insurance to pay a penalty to health insurance companies when they purchase new policies.

    The only long term approach that will work is to get government out of the healthcare business entirely and let the market regulate it.
    You will not see any motivation on the part of Congress to do anything until they are weaned off of their gold plated congressional healthcare plans and forced to select and pay for the same healthcare options as the general public.

    Everyone has lost site of the fact that healthcare is not a right.
    My god, putting something as important as health care in the hands of the government is, to me anyway, frightening.

    Don’t forget, if these corrupt morons were put in charge of the Sahara desert, there would be a sand shortage within five years.

  19. Irv Says:
    March 24th, 2017 at 5:49 pm
    To me the problem is that the establishment republicans haven’t figured out that they lost the election. …

    The people did not throw out the democrats in a historic election that no one predicted, or could believe after it happened, just to get a bunch of democrat-lite policies. The people did not defeat 15 other republicans just to get the same policies that most of them espoused.
    * * *
    My comment from the other AHCA post:
    http://neoneocon.com/2017/03/24/trumps-threat/#comment-2188187

    More from Reihan’s article (and you know you’re in trouble when you start reading sense in Slate).
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/03/paul_ryan_shouldn_t_blame_the_house_freedom_caucus_for_sinking_the_american.html

    “What Ryan failed to appreciate is that his mad dash to draft a replacement would end up alienating Freedom Caucus members who wanted to play an active role in shaping it. Repeal and delay was compelling to those on the Republican right who wanted to have a more open, inclusive process in which all elements of the GOP would take part in crafting successful legislation. Did it make sense to believe you could repeal Obamacare and then take your sweet time with a slow-moving, deliberative process designed to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable positions of moderate Republicans and the members of the HFC? Maybe not. But Ryan didn’t really make that case. Instead, he pivoted right back to the highly centralized, secretive process that drove the Freedom Caucus crazy in the first place.”

    Tim P Says:
    March 24th, 2017 at 10:24 pm
    I have to say that I agree Michael (5:44), Irv (5:49)and Geoffrey Britain (7:14)….
    The establishment republicans in congress are and always have been on board with Obamacare and single payer.

    They had seven years, SEVEN YEARS to think about and develop a replacement plan.
    * *
    Joseph and the Egyptian Famine come to mind.

  20. Oldfyler,

    Ryan is not the unicorn you are hoping for. There are other hous3 members who might fit the resume, but they will never be speaker.

  21. Not a Trump supporter, but he keeps his options open, and he still has options.

    For example, in the next few days, he could declare this a bureaucratic failure and take direct executive action, simply not enforcing the law.

    If the Republicans repeal Obamacare in the next 2 years, they will be acceptably victorious, in 1 year: heros. Regardless of how much incompetence lies between now and then.

  22. I repeat, where were those guys when Ryan was begged to take the job? I guess it is convenient to forget that he did not seek it; and only took it with assurances from all that he would be supported.

    Now the word is that he will be replaced. I doubt he will shed any tears–and it will be fascinating to see who, if anyone, steps up. Or should I say into the “mess”?

  23. Trump’s supporters will say that the master negotiator was playing his usual 3-D chess. I don’t see it, although I do know that news cycles are short, and this one will disappear soon, to be replaced by another.

    Well, the strategy is not that difficult to see. Some people need Obamacare, some people hate it. Whatever you do, you lose those people.

    Or maybe not…

    Right now people who need Obamacare can’t blame Trump because it hasn’t taken down. And people who hate Obamacare blame Republican establishment because they’re the ones that didn’t allow Obamacare to be taken down.

    Trump can not be blamed for ending Obamacare, because it didn’t end, neither for not ending it, because Republican establishment took that responsibility.

    Next prediction: no, Obamacare is not gonna be taken down, and Trump will take care of assigning that responsability to the Republican establishment.

  24. I thought the legislation would die in the Senate.

    &&&

    Trump can use the Jimmy Carter solution. He imploded the CAB — and the airline cartel — by merely not enforcing CAB regulations — and letting the world know of such.

    If Trump’s plum book officials simply stop enforcing 0-care regs…

    The dang thing gets repealed.

    This was the tactic used by Barry Soetoro to repeal America’s borders, too.

  25. Oldflyer (which I am as well) – I’m coming around to your position that things were just done in the wrong order. Trump has already changed immigration policies, reduced regulations (especially the EPA), approved the Keystone XL pipeline, and appointed a number of people that will have an impact on their agencies that can only help the country immensely. And, most importantly he has replaced Scalia with a true constitutionalist.

    With a few more victories like these and when the economy really takes off, which I’m convinced it will for real next year, and when Obamacare really starts to hurt everyone in the pocketbook, then he’ll have the credibility and power to force free market changes to the system. I still have a great deal of faith in his businessman approach to things.

    As to Ryan, he was the choice of the establishment republicans when Boehner was forced out and he had a record of being a conservative wonk enough to make the conservatives give him a chance. They now see they might have been wrong but we’ll see what he does now. He isn’t lost as Speaker yet but the next few months will tell if he can redeem himself from this disaster.

  26. @expat – re: your link – don’t know what kind of world that writer think’s he’s in, but describing putin as merely the guy, “Out of a crumbling empire, he rescued a nation-state, and gave it coherence and purpose”

    Well the same could be said of castro, saddam hussein and countless others.

    All he, and they, did was replace the “kleptocrats” with their own, and themselves. Some kind of “order” is always what an authoritarian brings.
    .

    “we will get nowhere if we assume that Putin sees the world as we do

    Strawman. Of course he doesn’t. Nobody is really saying he does, either.
    .

    “Generally, if you like that (international) system, you will consider Vladimir Putin a menace. If you don’t like it, you will have some sympathy for him. Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism”

    Not so subtle way to tell people what they ought to think (something he starts out saying he doesn’t want to do), by associating a presumed if then relationship that really doesn’t exist.

    One can think the “international system” does need change, but still think putin is a threat. Maybe not #1 for the US, but definitely on the top tier.
    .

    Do you really think this is the stuff of a strong argument as to why putin is not a threat?

    I sure don’t.

    This is more of that same decious goofus “911 flight” crap, which barely holds up to any basic logic.

  27. I read the Surber piece. He’s delusional.

    When a win for your guy is a win but a loss for your guy is also a win, you aren’t living in reality. I know, I know – 4 dimensional chess and all that. But the more likely outcome is not a good replacement for Obamacare. It is either more of the same or single payer.

    Also, I’m a strict constructionist. The President swears to faithfully execute the laws of the land. Not “let them explode”.

    Whether I like the law or not.

  28. @Bill – right!

    The “3D chess” type argument always seems to crop up when there is an obvious fail or shortcoming on trump’s part.
    .

    Just as this subaru guy has, noticed that there are increasingly more articles comparing trump to Reagan.

    Like the article I critiqued above, false comparisons abound to try to shape people’s opinions in a favorable light.

    trump is far from running a Reaganesque administration.

    For one, Reagan was able to reach beyond the msm and make his case, and provide a positive vision for where he wanted to take the country – broadening his appeal.

    trump’s use of the media has been for something very different, and the vision is hardly positive, despite what his fans believe.

  29. All of the talk here is about process, not product.
    The process was crappy because the Ryancare product was crappy also. But the product was perhaps better than the failing, Medicaid-expanding Obamacare.
    Why are people fascinated by process over product?

  30. “Why did they let it get to this embarrassing point? Obamacare repeal and replacement was a huge cornerstone of the platform of the Republican Party (including Trump)” – Neo

    Never did like the 10,000 GOP votes to repeal obamacare during the prior administration. That is, without having a plan of their own to promote.

    They had nothing to “sell” to the public, as they left it an open question on what they’d actually do that was different.
    .

    Of course, having “nothing” reduces the risk of having to face dem criticism during an election cycle.

    But, we now see the other risk, that they actually don’t have anything – or, as it turned out, worse, as they would rather tweak, ad hoc, what’s there than put forward something that better hewed to their stated principles.
    .

    Frankly, if we could elect trump, we ought to have been able to have a bolder plan to put out for vote.

    Neither trump, nor Ryan and the GOP in Congress put that type of plan forward.

    Without a plan largely in hand, and with the desire to rush it through Congress, their focus was on how to shoehorn something into the current Congressional voting rules structure. There was, perhaps, a desire to also (vengefully) tweek the dem’s noses by using “reconciliation” to bypass the need for dem votes.

    In the end, it was a horribly compromised plan that really didn’t fit the principles the GOP had long been campaigning on, and didn’t have a long runway to make the “sale” to a public (who were already very much wanting to change away from obamacare, btw – they were primed).
    .

    trump did create problems for the GOP in getting to where this needed to be:

    1) despite how he was all over the map, no doubt, many of his supporters would have latched onto his various statements that implied some benefit (e.g. “coverage for everyone”). This may have left the GOP “boxed in” perceptually, in the final solution. However, given how mutable trump was, this could have been overcome, I believe.
    2) he didn’t provide leadership on direction to Congress. This left Congress to “guess” what would be acceptable to trump to pass. This also probably left the GOP in Congress open to more internal debate, perhaps thinking they could get a “deal”. This was left open very late in the game by the “let’s make a deal” message the WH perpetuated, with no runway to make the sale to the public.
    3) too much airtime was taken up by trump’s distractions that what was left hardly provided a basis to drive popular support for the change. There is only so much Congressional arm twisting that can be accomplished. trump has a megaphone that can reach voters directly, and, IMHO, he might have been able to swing some dem votes his way, if artfully done.
    .

    The strategic timing was a choice by both Congress and the WH. Was this very difficult problem the first doable priority?

    Evidently not.

    BOTH Ryan and trump are weakened by this outcome.

    Does it mean trump or the GOP’s agenda for this term is dead?

    Hardly.

    They just need a few legislative “wins” under their belt and tackle this one with their momentum and renewed support / trust.
    .

    WRT obamacare, it still has its flaws, is in a “death spiral”, and has a public still primed for change. It has to, and will be changed.

    This recent legislative failure, and obamacare ticking time bomb, leaves the door open to do something “bold”, if the GOP and trump care to handle it with more care.
    .

    But, trump needs to be a LOT more “presidential” in order for this to work out. The danger is we continue to see what we have, and he becomes a permanent drag on getting things done.

    Would also like to see the GOP get some backbone and stick to their principles, but, it seems (mistakenly, IMHO), they no longer felt the need to even vocalize it with the 2016 campaign, lest they fall out of favor with trump and his hard core supporters. This will continue to dog the GOP, as long as trump continues to be mutable, and folks cheer him on for his “3D chess fight” illusion.
    .

    In the end, like everything else, “We’ll See”.

  31. This country — as it works now — deserves to sink. It’s a ship of fools and their physically dysfunctional clients, who are strangling everyone who doesn’t enjoy living as a termite hauling their sins around on his back. I am almost looking forward to when it happens.

    Says more about the individual making this sad statement, than of the state of the world.

    The reality is that democracy has always been messy. The fight for ideas is never ending.

    But, if our approach is that all those “others” are too stupid or otherwise deficient to bother to try to convince, then is it a wonder they aren’t?
    .

    What I’d like people to absorb is the idea that the more power we leave in the hands of government, the more effort we need to put into this “convincing” each election cycle (among other things).

    As one indicator, not surprising that it costs approximately $1B for each candidate in a POTUS election cycle (trump notwithstanding, in an anomalous year with an exceptionally lousy opponent).

  32. Big Maq, I certainly didn’t get the message that Putin is wonderful or harmless from the linked article. Interesting how two minds can view the same information and come to differing conclusions.

    The article pointed out why Obama/Clinton’s approach to Putin was a disaster. They were arrogant and refused to try to understand what has happened in Russia. Putin is a thug, but then so are Raoul Castro, Ali Khamenei, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, and other leaders of sovereign countries. Some are more immediately dangerous than others, but all must be dealt with and the better we understand what makes them tick, the more successful our approach can be.

    In 1991 when the USSR collapsed, I remember reading many articles about the fact that free markets and democracy had won the long Cold War. And that all the world would soon be trending in that direction. Well, we know now that didn’t happen. Humans are still hung up on the promises of egalitarianism offered by Communism and the certainty offered by dictatorships or theocracies. It is apparently in our genes. We who live in the U.S. find it hard to understand because we take free markets and democracy too much for granted.

    Putin is not that unusual among leaders of other countries outside the West. He will never be a close ally, but considering his store of nuclear weapons, we should strive to be resolute in the face of his aggression, (a strong NATO) but find ways to lessen the tension between our countries. Declaring him an enemy and dissing him on the world stage is not going to make things better.

  33. “I certainly didn’t get the message that Putin is wonderful or harmless” – JJ

    I quoted some of his opening and closing statements. That is the message he is presenting – they were not buried in pages 2 or 3.

    The author’s point wasn’t that positive, nor was my point about his writing that he was so.

    However, he was certainly playing down the threat.
    .

    “Putin is a thug”

    Had the author opened, and come out and concluded as you have, wrt putin, there’d be no argument.
    .

    When obama laughed at Romney for identifying Russia as one of the US’ biggest threats on the world stage, I hardly think the dem world view was “declaring (putin) the enemy and dissing him”.

    The dems (remember h clinton was obama’s SECSTATE) have consistently underplayed our enemies capabilities and threat level.
    .

    That trump hasn’t much to say, or, worse, makes moral equivalency remarks wrt putin, seems to be as far off the mark as obama was, and is as troubling as his laughing at the “jayvee” ISIS teams.

    The author seems to roundaboutly justifying trump’s behavior on this issue… sort of along the “3D chess” sort of argument, which seems far from the real explanation, as there is little evidence that trump “thinks” that “deeply” about the relationship with putin and Russia.

  34. Frog:

    I think the answer to your question is that the quality of the product was not in dispute. I think everyone agreed it wasn’t good enough.

    The other problem with talking about the product is that health care reform is technical and complex. People sometimes single out one part of it to criticize, however, such as saying they would rather have had insurance that crossed state lines (usually ignoring the reasons that isn’t the case right now, reasons which have to do with differences in the demographics of the states as well as the different regulations and rules about the insurance business in each state).

    The other reason people are talking here about the process more than the product is that the process was the news du jour—the way the vote went on Friday, that is, and what it means politically.

  35. Big Maq: “I hardly think the dem world view was “declaring (putin) the enemy and dissing him”.

    Obama and Hillary tried to have it both ways. Obama believed he could get Putin to downsize his nukes without showing him any respect. Obama and Hillary made a big deal about gay marriage policy in Russia. (When both of them did an about face on gay marriage in about six months time.) Obama dissed Putin by not showing up at the opening ceremonies of the Sochi Winter Olympics, when he had been expressly invited. The U.S media in Sochi kept up a litany of complaint about Russia’s “treatment” of gays. Putin spent lavishly on the games. He wanted a modicum of respect. He got dissed.

    Whether that was enough to motivate him to try to help Trump defeat Hillary is a question that is waiting to be answered. Since the health of the Russian economy hangs on the price of oil, why wouldn’t he favor the anti-fracking, anti-fossil fuels, anti-defense candidate – Hillary?

    I have not seen much of anyone writing or talking about Putin and what he thinks since the days of W looking him in the eye and thinking he was a good man. Mr. Caldwell’s piece was unusual in that he tired to look at him from the standpoint of a man trying to resist globalism. Something few have considered. And why people who like Donald Trump might look favorably at Putin. Interesting stuff, IMO.

    I’m becoming less favorable toward globalism all the time. Mainly because its proponents seem to believe that no borders and multi-culturalism are working just fine. The evidence is mounting up against them. For me it’s been a long journey from “The Lexus and The Olive Tree” and “The Pentagon’s New Map” – both pro globalism – to where my mind is today. The day may come when the tribes will mix freely and everyone will sing Kumbaya, but we need to do a lot more evolving. A lot more.

  36. Why not wait a while and do it all at once?

    Trum said do it his way.

    As your King, Ryan and even you have to obey.

  37. I analyzed Putin’s presentation, same for Snowden.

    https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2017/03/11/putin-speaks-on-americas-anti-missile-defenses-and-the-world-balance/

    Putin also had an interesting backstory concerning his father and his mother, when being baptized as a child. Child baptism is questionable (do they just go to hell if they aren’t baptized in time…) but it looks like Putin has acted on his own free will concerning Orthodox Chalcedonian Christianity.

  38. “Obama and Hillary tried to have it both ways.” – JJ

    Sorry, but citing things like obama “not showing up” to an Olympic Games ceremony, that is hardly stuff that would counter, say, how obama seemed to “let” Russia invade Ukraine (and without much consequence), and seemed to have “welcomed” (if not “invited”) Russia into Syria (despite the very predictable risk – that came to fruition).

    putin is who he is, and perceived “disses” were hardly the motivation for the action he has taken. putin had a whole lot more strategy behind them.

    obama’s laughing at Romney was not much different than his claim that ISIS was a “jayvee team”. It reflects his thinking, and underestimation of our foes.

    Bottom Line: obama and his admin had consistently underplayed the seriousness of several threats, Russia being one of them.
    .

    WRT Russian action in our election, doubtful putin thought he was “helping” trump (like overwhelmingly most others, he probably calculated that clinton would win) as much as he merely wants to sow the seeds of discontent and distrust in the US (and the West).

    He was very successful with these recent efforts.

    Where we are distracted (as we have been in spades w trump), that takes our eye off of other things, opening the door much wider for Russia to maneuver.

    That trump cannot say much negative wrt Russia nor putin, just reinforces that opportunity for Russia, and to putin.

    AND, by my estimation, that sets trump up for the left to make a YUGE deal about possible links between him and Russia.
    .

    “Mr. Caldwell’s piece was unusual in that he tired to look at him from the standpoint of a man trying to resist globalism”

    Of Course putin is “resisting globalism”!!!

    Make no mistake, what he is fighting is a US / Western based “globalism”, and his is not anywhere near the reasons you may be against it.

    He’d LOVE a Russian based “globalism”, as any authoritarian regime would.

    It is as “interesting” (intellectually, or entertainingly) that trump hasn’t much to say crtically about Russia or putin, as it was that obama couldn’t say the words “Radical Islamic” next to the word “Terrorism”.

    No doubt, consequences may well follow a similar pattern.
    .

    “I’m becoming less favorable toward globalism all the time. Mainly because its proponents seem to believe that no borders and multi-culturalism are working just fine”

    You are conflating a more hard libertarian view with what I suspect is really a suspicion of the left.

    Fine, but, a great many of unrelated problems seem wrapped up into your statement, which verges on suggesting a “baby out with the bathwater” type of conclusion, if I read between the lines correctly. It deserves unpacking.

    However, won’t debate that all other than to say, as above, putin is hardly resisting “globalism” on / for those terms.

    So, what we individually think about our own views of “globalism”, and the path forward for OUR country, doesn’t have any relevance to his actions and the threats he / they pose.

  39. Another thought…

    If putin WAS/IS opposed to “globalism” for reasons similar to what “we” may have, then why the subterfuge?

    Surely, he has other more legitimate means to work with other democracies vs hacking email systems and interfering with democratic elections?

    Will never be convinced that an authoritarian regime of any sort is not a potential threat to our country or our allies’ – especially given Russia’s size, history, and putin’s actions, even within his own country’s borders.

    Too much there to naively take putin as benign, who just happens to be “a man trying to resist globalism”.

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