Remember the future?
While others are retreating to cozy corners to masturbate psychologically and rhetorically, conservatives might be interested in at least two things that will decide how their lives will be shaped if they defer on making those decisions themselves instead.
Near term, King v. Burwell goes to oral argument before SCOTUS March 4 - 48 hours from now. If King wins, Obamacare immediately becomes a failed state, like Libya and Somalia. That structural vacuum will demand filling, and the first and loudest call will be for Republicans to immediately replace what was lost - exactly as it was before.
Doing nothing is not an adult option. However, there are contingency plans in the wings. Legislation to enact the best consensus option had better be ready to drop in June or whenever SCOTUS finally rules, or Republicans can probably expect a growing public PR beating to begin on both legislative and presidential fronts heading toward November, 2016.
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If Republicans don't want to look up unexpectedly one day to find this smiling face lecturing them from behind the presidential seal, it's long past time to get vaccinated. Why Ben Carson has become the alternative boyfriend while the far more intellectually and politically estimable - and electable - Shelby Steele is not being groomed and being made ready for the inevitable ethnographic face off escapes me entirely.
Sooner or later, Republicans are going to be forced to deal a serious presidential alternative to the "old white men" slur, and the time to recognize that is before sooner gets here.
This looming issue again points out the tragic loss of opportunity in 2012 by not running a candidate who could attack on the issue of Obamacare. Nope -- had to pick the one guy who was as knee-deep in it as Obama himself.
ReplyDeleteTrue, if Republicans and Independents opposed to Romneycare in Massachusetts had voted for Romney anyway once he had become a candidate, we'd have a Republican House, Senate and President right now able to dismantle it smartly. What am I saying? Already having dismantled it smartly. Instead we have a different situation, one at best described as hope for SCOTUS change in the face of at least two more years of a unitary community organizing executive.
DeleteDismantled it smartly? That group?
DeleteThe Repubs ran just last fall with one of the main campaign issues being the lawless executive action by Obama on immigration. They win by a huge margin, but once the term begins they run away scared on the very issue on which the voters gave them a mandate and on which they have a federal court injunction to boot.
So I have no reason to believe they would have dismantled Obamacare at all, much less smartly, after an election in which it wasn't an issue.
Pik, there's no pony. There's never going to be a pony. Did I mention a Republican president as part of the package? Boehner did his thing, and McConnell doesn't have a strong enough majority. Krauthammer's right: McConnell should just abolish the filibuster (simple majority vote) and deliver a bill to Obama. But, as I said, a Republican president would have changed the entire calculus.
DeleteI agree with Krauthammer. I don't know what McConnell is waiting for. I think he should should the same iron fist that Reid did. It's our turn.
DeleteMeant to write "should show the same iron fist."
DeleteBoehner did his thing, and McConnell doesn't have a strong enough majority.
ReplyDeleteI'd think that there are a few round-heeled Democrat senators who could be leaned on, just like Reid could always find an Arlen Spector, McCain, Lindsey Graham, et al. to turn into a "Gang of X", or to trade something else for support on this, or some other tactic to hold Obama and the Dems accountable. But nope -- McConnell runs to deal Reid the winning hand, making the impasse the fault of the Republicans.
I don't think that it's a matter of competence, tho. It is a matter of will. Those in the Republican leadership know that the greatest threat to their own power is on their right, much more so than from the Dems. So the conservatives must be defeated, and this is how to do it.
Those in the Republican leadership know that the greatest threat to their own power is on their right, much more so than from the Dems.
DeleteI can't disagree with you there.
AOSHQ thinks the fix was in from the beginning. Allahpundit thinks it was a long shot bet ultimately lost. But once you hazard the now failed amnesty-DHS funding gambit, absent then abolishing the filibuster I don't see any unilateral moves left at all.
...absent then abolishing the filibuster...
DeleteWhen you're as convinced as they are that they'll soon be in the minority again, the last thing you'll do is give away one of the few reasons for K street to spend money on minority members.
James Antle turns Pik's gripe into a full primer:
DeleteBest line: As baseball legend Casey Stengel might ask, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”