(In response to numerous requests, JoshuaPundit happily announces the return of Weekend Monkey's weekly column on things political)
Hidey Ho, primates! Welcome to the real banana, the inside poop on politics from someone who knows the fetid jungle from the inside out. It's good to be back!
As we take a looky at the healthcare reform debacle and the likely feedback, I gotta tell you...I can hardly believe how screwed up this mess has gotten. It kinda resembles the whole idea of insurance, where the policy holder wins if he loses and loses if he wins. ( take notes and use your fingers, primates. Trust me, it works out)
Old line Donkey pollsters Pat Caddell and Douglas Schoen have a scribble out in today's WAPO that pretty much tells the story when they say that the battle for public opinion on Obama's health care plan has been lost. At this point, they say that if it fails to go through, my Democrats get to pay the price for failure at the midterms. Unless they manage to shove it through, in which case the carnage will be even worse!
I could see the Rethugs with a net pickup of 35-40 seats plus in the House and at least 7 Senate seats...maybe more.And you know I'll be handicapping the races for you as election day gets nearer..some easy shekels to be had!
The primates are simply in an ugly mood no matter which way things swing.It woulda been one thing to pull this off in say, March or February last year, when Obama hadn't quite acquired the odor he has now, It's something else to try and pull this off when his approval ratings are in the low forties and things have shifted downwind.
The smart thing to do would be to throttle everything back and com eup with a more modest, bi-partisan (*choke*) bill that peeled off at least a couple of ReThugs to support it, but at this point, Reid and Pelosi have have peed in the pond so much that it's likely impossible.
No, my Democrats have bought the ticket and will take the ride.
So, the big question remains....can the Donkeys push this through? There's really only two ways it could happen.
Pelosi doesn't have the votes in the House to pass the Senate bill yet, trust me on that. If she did, that bill would be sitting on Obama's desk waiting for his sig. But can she beg, borrow steal or muscle the votes in the next week or so? That's the question. Given how faction ridden and fear-filled the Donkeys are right now,it could happen but I make the odds no better than 6-4 against.
The other way is a weird parliamentary procedure based on an arcane reading of the Rules that would allow the House to simply 'deem the Senate bill passed' without actually taking a vote or a roll call.
This could work, but they would probably need Biden to stomp hard on any naysayers or amending attempts and help muscle it through. The political fall out from doing it this way would be a poop storm to end all poop storms, but I could see where the Donkeys might be thinking that if they've been crazy enough to climb up the tree this far, they might as well go totally out on a limb.
Obama, of course is doing one thing smart. He plans to be out of the country and hobnobbing with his Muslim homies in Indonesia when this all goes down. After making the mess, I gotta give him credit for being smart enough to take himself a little vacation and leave it for others to clean up after him.
Very presidential.
Weekend Monkey was a Democratic candidate for president in 2008 and is JoshuaPundit's political Guru. He can be reached at wendmonkey@yahoo.com
AAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYOU AGAIN!!!!!!!
i can't think of a better way to spoil the start of spring break, than to see you have hacked into ff website once again.
numerous requests just means you're back at it again with your ACORN buddies, huh?
so let's go toe to toe ....... or ....... whatever you call those things.
that fetid jungle would be what you call ........ home?
where is your confidence in the american people chimpy? the voters are going to see the same actors as in 2008. they're going to get the same hopenchange message. the white house won't let 'em bring out the "keep the hope alive" theme until 2012. the way i see it, the dimocrats will pick up 10 seats in the house and 2 in the senate.
the only way the republicans will pick up any seats at all, is if they are endorsed by meghan mccain. BTW, you wanna buy some nudie photos of you and meghan doing the primal thing? lemme know.
i noticed you used the term "shove it" in reference to the passage of the health care legislation.
i use that term a lot when referencing yourself. of course when i do, it has a more physical posture.
whether or not this legislation will pass, the dimocrats won't be affected at the polls. the american people won't care. there is something about being dumb, and a sack full of hair, but i can't compose it right now.
the vast majority of people who went to the polls to put a communist in the white house aren't going to care or go to the midterm polls. the rest are going to be sooooo fed up with this whole mess that a couple of dozen of your people will comprise a simple majority.
people who do pay attention to your socialist buddies and what they want to do, didn't buy it then and won't buy it now. there are a handful of us.
if anyone who refers to themselves as duly elected representatives of the people want to do anything about health care they should:
GET
THE
GOVERNMENT
OUT
OF
HEALTH
CARE
MANAGEMENT
TOTALLY
and they can start with big pharma subsidies.
it is not gonna happen, because everyone is on the health care gravy train that is the gov't teat.
i noticed when you started to talk about climbing a tree you didn't utter the words "tort reform". try holding onto those limbs and force those two words out of your mouth, and we'll see how long you hold on.
i'm going to go take a shower now, chimpy, and follow that with a full chemical washdown, after the hosing you've given us.