Zombie Obamacare Repeal Walks Again

The repealing of Obamacare has risen again from the grave, in the guise of the "Graham-Cassidy Bill" in the Senate. By many metrics, it's the worst one yet.

“This bill keeps 90 percent of the spending of Obamacare and reshuffles it,’’ Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said on Monday. “Really, when you look at how it reshuffles it, it does it just to take money from the Democrat states and give it to Republican states.’’

Block grants. Republicans love block grants. "Here's some money. Now get outta my face!" And they don't even try to hide the urge to punish, based on ideology.

Virtually everyone else says Graham-Cassidy will throw millions off health insurance, while "Medicaid would face cuts comparable to those in earlier repeal bills, and insurers in some states could charge higher premiums to people with pre-existing conditions." 

If you're sick, you'll be punished. If you vote Democratic, you'll be buried.

Well ... McCain!

Perhaps mortality focused his energies and his resolve, and he came through like he said he would. Perhaps he didn't want a legacy of killing health care for millions as he approaches his own battle with an aggressive brain cancer.

“I’ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict party-line basis without a single Republican vote,” he said in a statement explaining his vote. “We should not make the mistakes of the past.”

Two votes were called just after midnight. The first was a Democratic motion to refer the "skinny repeal" back to committee. It failed. The second vote was to pass the "skinny repeal." If you were watching, you know that the second vote prompted a full-court press by Republican brass on Senator John McCain.

McCain was seated next to Sen. Lindsay Graham who had derided the "skinny repeal" earlier in the day as a fraud but who had decided to vote for it anyway because he thought he had a promise from House Speaker Paul Ryan that it would never become law. Hell of a way to govern: "I'm voting for this law because I know it'll never become law."

Lisa Murkowski, one of the three no votes, approached McCain who smiled up at her and gave her a thumbs-down. Susan Collins joined the conversation. All three no votes were now talking.

From the well of the chamber, Majority Leader McConnell dispatched the other Arizona senator Jeff Flake to lobby McCain. McCain wouldn't look at him and continued talking to Murkowski and Collins.

According to reporter Ed O'Keefe, "That left Flake, one of the most polite members of the Senate, leaning into the conversation uncomfortably with a pained look on his face, as if he had to tell his father that he had run over the family dog with his car."

Seeing that Flake was getting nowhere, Vice President Mike Pence joined the conversation, and for 21 minutes he cajoled McCain, Murkowski, and Collins until he was pulled away for a phone call from the White House.

At 1:10 a.m. McCain crossed the Senate chamber and talked to Chuck Schumer and other Democrats. Sen. Dianne Feinstein gave him a big hug. As the vote on passage began, McCain was again off the floor talking to V.P. Pence, but he returned at 1:29 a.m. and delivered his no vote to the clerk.

There were audible gasps in the chamber.

Wonder how his best friend Lindsay Graham feels this morning, having witnessed an actual act of courage last night.

The Hawk Squawks

Oh, Lindsey Graham, you're so cute! Thinking you might productively run for president of these United States! Showing up in Iowa and New Hampshire now to "test the waters"-- by which we assume he means he'll drink a glass of water in Nashua and then a glass of water in Iowa City and evaluate them for e-coli.

“We’re going to talk to folks about their view of what’s there for a guy like me,” Graham said. “And we’re going to meet some people who, I think, can be very helpful to us down the road.”

"A guy like me." Isn't that adorable?

Among the many things about Jon Stewart we're going to miss: his impression of Lindsey Graham as Aunt Pittypat.

Sen. Lindsey Graham Needs To Look Like a Man

What does a Republican senator do when threatened on his right by not one but three Tea Party conservatives who say he's just a girlie man in need of a good thrashing? Why, he makes political hay out of attacking women's rights, natch!

So South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham chose Fox News this morning to announce that he'll be pushing to make abortion illegal in this country after 20 weeks. There's no chance whatever that such a law will ever pass the Senate, and no chance whatever that President Obama would ever sign such a law.

But that doesn't matter. All that matters is the show of conservative macho. So are we to believe that the voters of South Carolina are dumber than a box of doorknobs to buy Senator Graham's display of a cosmetically enhanced hairy chest? And what kind of a human being decides to beat up on any class of citizens, especially ones he considers weaker and hence available tools for his political grandstanding, just for the sake of a pathetic job?

More Cracks in the Norquist Dam

It appeared that Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss was the first to turn apostate about the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge that he himself, Saxby Chambliss, had previously signed. Then yesterday Republican Senator Lindsay Graham publicly waffled on a Sunday morning Bloviators' Show. (So did Republican Rep. Peter King, on Meet the Press, and John McCain, on Fox News Sunday.)

Actually, none of those guys were the first to crack. Republican Senator Tom Coburn, way back in July, wrote an op-ed published in the NYTimes that complained about Norquist’s “tortured definition of tax purity” while concluding that the Norquist pledge is now irrelevant.

More amazing ... the sudden defection of Arizona's newest Republican Senator Jeff Flake, than which there is no more conservative individual in Congress (Flake voted with Virginia Foxx to deny federal relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). During a candidate debate this year, Flake actually denied having ever signed the Norquist pledge, though he most certainly did. “The only pledge I’d sign [now] is a pledge to sign no more pledges,” Flake said, which was his way of saying, "Don't count on me, Grover."

We knew Norquist's grip on Republican gonads was really doomed when we heard Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday say on November 11th:

"It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer. Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?"

Under these circumstances, what's a Tea Partier to do? More to the point, what will Grover Norquist order them to do?

Another Republican Senator Gets Wobbly on Norquist No-Tax Pledge

Well, it is Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. But still.

Going numb to Norquist is the first step toward reality for these guys.

Previously.

McCain, About to Blow a Fuse

ABC News reporter David Wright, traveling with McCain in Colombia, asked the candidate to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency.

"McCain became visibly angry .... 'Please,' he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the very question."

McCain had to be rescued by his personal body servant Sen. Lindsey Graham (apparently Joe Liebermann was not available).

We're beginning to get it: John McCain is a house of cards built on his ace, "I was a prisoner of war." If the ace has no particular value for governing the country, he collapses.

What the Hell's Wrong With Obama?

Let’s see if we can mince our words daintily here: Barack Obama is pissing us off. Majorly.

Oh it’s not his about-face on public financing, though that was where every Republican talking-point started on the Sunday Morning Gasbags. That promise Obama made in 2007 regarding public financing “wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” sez Sen. Lindsay Graham on “Meet the Press.” (And incidentally, why the Obama campaign would send Gov. Bill Richardson to try to spin the flip-flop positively does not speak well of the campaign’s managerial skills. Richardson was horrible as usual, positively inept, so much so that Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” laughed out loud at him. “Who are you trying to kid, Governor?” Joe Biden was much better on “Meet the Press,” not trying to deny that Obama’s changed position was a change of position but lecturing the pious Sen. Graham on two realities: if Sen. McCain could raise money from 1,400,000 small donors like Obama has, then Sen. McCain wouldn’t be opting for public financing either, and those 1,400,000 small donors do NOT include special interest PACs and lobbyists.)

Under the circumstances, we would be suspicious of Obama’s grasp of reality if he DIDN’T change his mind about public financing.

No, what’s got us disturbed and distrusting him – yes, DISTRUSTING Obama – is his sudden support for the “compromise deal” to “fix” the federal government's domestic spying powers (the FISA law), with its retroactive telecom immunity and the legislative perfume it sprays all over the pig-patch of the Bush administration’s shredding of the Constitution. Compromise? Sen. Russ Feingold calls the new bill “not a compromise; it is a capitulation.”

Why? Why would Obama do this? (Never mind Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats. We essentially gave up on them months ago, and determined ourselves to be merely pleasantly surprised if and when they ever decide to stand up to El Presidente.) Glenn Greenwald asks the whither Obama question better than I:

It's either that he "chickened out" or ... Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he'll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives -- and I don't know (or much care) what they are -- Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush's executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of "Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights." Note that the very first line of Obama's statement warns us that we face what he calls "grave threats," and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good.

Whatever. But Republicans who claim to love the Constitution and who profess themselves giddy that they’ve gotten the congressional Democrats to cave on FISA might want to consider these extraordinary spying powers in the hands of a president of the other party. We don’t want them in the hands of a president of EITHER party.