Random Thought on Liberal Debate Excuses

It occurs to me that the altitude didn't harm Obama when he was speaking in front of those Styrofoam columns to accept the nomination in Mile High Stadium four years ago.

The Most Interesting Man in the World on the Biggest Failure in the World

Math Has Never Been Obama's Strong Suit

We've Heard It All Before

Chair

Photo of the Day: Obama's Nightmare

Hat tip: Ace of Spades.

Tweet of the Day

"Paul Ryan represents Obama's most horrifying nightmare: math."
- Iowahawk

When Paul Ryan Met Barack Obama

Watch all six minutes of this. The look Obama gives Ryan at 5:26 or so is priceless.

The Imaginary World of Joe Donnelly

Matt Tully's column this weekend is a love letter to Joe Donnelly, singing the praises of the liberal Congressman from northern Indiana whose voting record has been in lockstep with Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi from the moment he took office.

This liberal voting record--a hard and objective, unchallenged fact--is something that is inconvenient to the narrative of Tully's paean to Joe Donnelly (really a sour grapes lament of the defeat of Dick Lugar), so Tully simply omits it.

In Tully's world, Donnelly is a soft cuddly moderate who loves bipartisanship, a guy who can get away with an outright lie of claiming he never voted for Nancy Pelosi for house speaker when in fact he voted for her twice.

Let's look at the column:

It's easy to be depressed about politics these days.

Super PACs shape campaigns from the shadows, and cable news entertainers influence politics from the edge of sanity. Big issues go unaddressed because of partisan gridlock; yet, somehow, politicians such as Indiana's U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock emerge with promises to bring even more gridlock and partisanship to Capitol Hill.

Mourdock bluntly said recently: "We need less bipartisanship in Congress." Among many other such statements, there was this one: "To me, the highlight of politics, frankly, is to inflict my opinion on someone else."

I could go on; Mourdock is the Energizer Bunny of juvenile political ideas. So it's been nice to see that his divisive brand of politics has caused him trouble recently and helped make Indiana's Senate race competitive.

I'm curious about what makes the Senate race any more competitive than the one in 2010, other than columnists like Matt Tully proclaiming it to be so.

Gone are the pre-primary days when the Republican state treasurer had only to appeal to a small slice of the voter pool -- a slice that loved his inflammatory rhetoric. The general election season has arrived, and Mourdock's opposition to working with anyone who doesn't share his far-right worldview is a tougher sell among the 91 percent of Hoosier adults who either didn't vote in the Republican primary or didn't vote for him in that primary.

Fair enough. Mourdock must now sell his worldview to the 60% of Hoosiers that had him lead the Republican ticket statewide in 2010 (and had him beat Joe Donnelly in Donnelly's own district). This is neither a tough sell nor a new one for Richard Mourdock.

Mourdock's fortunes are not helped by the fact that his Democratic opponent is a workmanlike Blue Dog moderate. Joe Donnelly, a former small-business owner and current third-term U.S. House member from Northern Indiana, delivers a message built around two core ideas: create more jobs and turn Washington, D.C. into less of a toxic swamp.

This is interesting, as Joe Donnelly is currently in Washington and has by his voting record contributed greatly to 1) things that destroy jobs rather than create them, and 2) continue to keep Washington a toxic swamp.

There is also nothing "workmanlike" about Joe Donnelly's background (he's an attorney and a Democratic party hack), just like there's nothing actually moderate about him when you examine his voting record.

"This is about making Hoosier lives better and our country stronger," Donnelly told me over coffee at the City Cafe Downtown last week. "(Mourdock) is going there as a partisan warrior. I'm going there as the hired help from Indiana to make our state stronger."

Again, with his votes for Wall Street bailouts, Obama's economy-strangling deficits, Obama's budget-busting failed stimulus plan, and Obama's government takeover of health care, there is no record of Joe Donnelly using his time in Congress to "make Hoosier lives better and our country stronger."

Does anyone seriously think that the life of the average Hoosier is better today than it was when Joe Donnelly went to Washington? Is our country stronger? Certainly not with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Donnelly minding the store. Indiana is not any stronger, either.

Hired help, indeed. Most people would fire hired help with a record like Joe Donnelly's.

So far, Mourdock has been Donnelly's most valuable political asset, routinely saying things that his opponents couldn't make up. For example, he has said that if the Senate is not in Republican hands next year, his main goal as a taxpayer-salaried senator would be to travel the country campaigning to get more Republicans elected. He believes compromise can be achieved only if Democrats and moderate Republicans cave on every issue and embrace his positions. He has offered a laughable proposal to eliminate several federal agencies and departments without offering a sensible plan to replace the services they provide.

If you believe that more government and more debt and more spending is the answer, clearly you're going to be voting for Joe Donnelly. If you want less government and less debt and less spending, clearly you're going to be voting for Richard Mourdock.

As Mitch Daniels is fond of saying, "You'd be surprised how much government you'll never miss."

"What will happen if you act that way is people will ignore you," Donnelly said. "How can you be a serious part of any discussion if you've said from the beginning that the only plan you'll be a part of is your plan?"

Joe Donnelly hasn't exactly gotten a lot accomplished in Washington other than be a rubber stamp for a liberal agenda written out of Chicago by Obama and San Francisco by Nancy Pelosi.

In a state that leans to the right, those pulling for Donnelly point to his opposition to abortion, his support of gun rights and his call for less spending.

Oh, well that seals the deal, right? How encouraging.

Joe Donnelly has "called" for less spending.

His voting record, however, has been in lockstep for ever more spending.

Joe Donnelly says he is opposed to abortion.

His voting record, however, has been for policies like Federal funding of abortion and coercion of private Catholic hospitals to go against their pro-life beliefs by order of government decree.

Pay no attention to what he does in DC, folks. Only pay attention to the sweet lies he tells back here in Indiana.

That record could help sell his candidacy to independents and moderate Republicans. But what about Democrats? To that question, he said he would support President Obama "when he's right" but added that the problems facing the country aren't about partisan labels.

If his voting record is any indication, by Joe Donnelly's own words we can conclude that he believes Barack Obama is right with ballooning government spending, raising taxes, and Obamacare.

Remember, Joe Donnelly says he supports Barack Obama "when he's right."

His voting record shows that Joe Donnelly thinks Barack Obama is right a lot.

The Most Arrogant Man in the World

Hilarious.

Thoughts on the Obamacare Ruling

First of all, it must be said and often repeated that elections have consequences.

People voted for representatives who voted for the monstrous piece of legislation that was Obamacare and the administration that rammed it through. Congress has and has always had the power to levy taxes; I do not know why anyone should be surprised that 1) liberals voted to raise taxes and 2) tax increases are constitutional.

During the day, Drudge Chief Justice John Roberts' smiling picture as his headline with the caption "TAKE YOUR MEDICINE!" It is awful medicine indeed.

Second, it is not the court's role to strike laws because they were passed by politicians that lied to the people about what they were really doing. The recourse for dealing with lying politicians has always been at the ballot box.

I do think that the American people have never been lied to so brazenly about a domestic public policy initiative in recent times as they were about this. One need only spend a few moments with a search engine to turn up literally scores of video clips of Democrats asserting--in a bald-faced lie laid bare by Chief Justice Roberts' opinion--that this was not a tax increase.

Third, it is probably true that the ruling of the court will soften public opinion about the law somewhat in the short term (and look for the media to tout polls asserting as much). However, elite opinion has insisted for quite some time that the law was constitutional and this did not make it any more popular.

Affirmation of the law's constitutionality (convoluted as it was in Roberts' opinion) by five elites in black robes seems unlikely to change many opinions in the longer term. People didn't like Obamacare before, and they have never liked taxes. Will they now like something they didn't like upon the revelation that it also contains Supreme Court-approved tax increases? I agree with Stuart Rothenberg that such an outcome seems unlikely.

Fourth, I agree with Legal Insurrection and do not think that conservatives should grasp at straws hunting for smaller victories in the Roberts opinion. There were four votes to strike down the law--indeed, dissenting Justice Anthony Kennedy (supposedly the moderate swing justice of the court) was said to be visibly angry while Roberts read his opinion--and a Republican-appointed ostensibly constitutionalist and conservative justice failed to vote to do so for whatever reason (sincerity in the reasoning of his opinion, outside pressure, or a desire to husband the public image of the court, or whatever else).

This is an onerous piece of bad public policy that greatly expands the power of the state over the lives of the citizenry of this country, and the record of this country when it comes to the rollback of government power (to say nothing of entitlements) is not a good one. I have no hopes that the outcome of the election in November will see the law repealed root-and-branch as a 5-4 vote the other way clearly would have done.

Perhaps John Roberts is playing a longer game. Playing chess, as Erick Erickson calls it. But this assumes that the board will be such that he can advance a longer game. Should we get another liberal justice, that will never happen. The chance to stop this expansion of Federal power and end this assault on individual liberty was now, not ten years hence.

Which brings me to my fifth thought, which is that the court decision is a short-term victory for Republicans, as they will likely benefit from the wrath of the electorate over this in November. Democrats, after all, are dancing for joy just as many voters realize they've been had and are now subject to the largest tax increase in American history.

In the longer term, the court's decision is a great defeat for this country. It shrinks individual liberty, enshrines bad public policy, worsens the country's fiscal situation, and relegates vast sectors of the nation's economy to direct or indirect state control.

What is bad public policy when it was passed did not become better simply because five people in black robes decided to rule it constitutional.

Sixth, the fact that Obamacare is ultimately unworkable and will collapse under its own weight should not encourage anyone. History is replete with countries that have suffered great hardship because their leaders (elected or otherwise) failed to make blatantly obvious and common sense, but difficult, choices. Look at Europe right now.

Seventh and finally, if you want to feel encouraged (and I don't find it particularly encouraging, but you might), I invite you to read this piece by Sean Trende, which compares this ruling to the ruling in Marbury v. Madison, in which the chief justice outwitted a power grab by another president, trading a short-term defeat for a long-term victory.

And here's where I come back to my first point.

Elections matter.

Who we elect matters.

There's an election coming.

It's time to get to work.

Quote of the Day

From the dissent:

If Congress can reach out and command even those furthest removed from an interstate market to participate in the market, then the Commerce Clause becomes a font of unlimited power, or in Hamilton’s words, “the hideous monster whose devouring jaws . . . spare neither sex nor age, nor high nor low, nor sacred nor profane.” The Federalist No. 33, p. 202 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961).

National Review: John Roberts' Folly

National Review's editorial today says a lot:

In today’s deeply disappointing decision on Obamacare, a majority of the Supreme Court actually got the Constitution mostly right. The Commerce Clause — the part of the Constitution that grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce among the states — does not authorize the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance. The Court, by a 5–4 margin, refused to join all the august legal experts who insisted that of course it granted that authorization, that only yahoos and Republican partisans could possibly doubt it. It then pretended that this requirement is constitutional anyway, because it is merely an application of the taxing authority. Rarely has the maxim that the power to tax is the power to destroy been so apt, a portion of liberty being the direct object in this case.

What the Court has done is not so much to declare the mandate constitutional as to declare that it is not a mandate at all, any more than the mortgage-interest deduction in the tax code is a mandate to buy a house. Congress would almost surely have been within its constitutional powers to tax the uninsured more than the insured. Very few people doubt that it could, for example, create a tax credit for the purchase of insurance, which would have precisely that effect. But Obamacare, as written, does more than that. The law repeatedly speaks in terms of a “requirement” to buy insurance, it says that individuals “shall” buy it, and it levies a “penalty” on those who refuse. As the conservative dissent points out, these are the hallmarks of a “regulatory penalty, not a tax.”

The law as written also cuts off all federal Medicaid funds for states that decline to expand the program in the ways the lawmakers sought. A majority of the Court, including two of the liberals, found this cut-off unconstitutionally coercive on the states. The Court’s solution was not to invalidate the law or the Medicaid expansion, but to rule that only the extra federal funds devoted to the expansion could be cut off. As the dissenters rightly point out, this solution rewrites the law — and arbitrarily, since Congress could have avoided the constitutional problem in many other ways.

The dissent acknowledges that if an ambiguous law can be read in a way that renders it constitutional, it should be. It distinguishes, though, between construing a law charitably and rewriting it. The latter is what Chief Justice John Roberts has done. If Roberts believes that this tactic avoids damage to the Constitution because it does not stretch the Commerce Clause to justify a mandate, he is mistaken. The Constitution does not give the Court the power to rewrite statutes, and Roberts and his colleagues have therefore done violence to it. If the law has been rendered less constitutionally obnoxious, the Court has rendered itself more so. Chief Justice Roberts cannot justly take pride in this legacy.

The Court has failed to do its duty. Conservatives should not follow its example — which is what they would do if they now gave up the fight against Obamacare. The law, as rewritten by judges, remains incompatible with the country’s tradition of limited government, the future strength of our health-care system, and the nation’s solvency. We are not among those who are convinced that we will be stuck with it forever if the next election goes wrong: The law is also so poorly structured that we think it may well unravel even if put fully into effect. But we would prefer not to take the risk.

It now falls to the Republicans, and especially to Mitt Romney, to make the case for the repeal of the law and for its replacement by something better than either it or the health-care policies that preceded it. Instead of trusting experts to use the federal government’s purchasing power to drive efficiency throughout the health sector — the vain hope of Obamacare’s Medicare-cutting board — they should replace Medicare with a new system in which individuals have incentives to get value for their dollar. Instead of having Washington establish a cartel for the insurance industry, they should give individuals tax credits and the ability to purchase insurance across state lines. Instead of further centralizing the health-care system, in short, they should give individuals more control over their insurance.

Opponents should take heart: The law remains unpopular. Let the president and his partisans ring their bells today, and let us work to make sure that they are wringing their hands come November.

Bush's Fault