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[Neonivek]

This is the beginning of the end.

Yep... the 3+ year end.

[Hanslanda]

I am patient. And I could live another 50 plus years. This idiot is probably just a blip on the radar.

[palsch]

David Frum's piece in the Atlantic is worth a read. Hard to get a representative quote, but...

A few minutes after the House vote [for the ACA], I wrote a short blog post for the website I edited in those days. The site had been founded early in 2009 to argue for a more modern and more moderate form of Republicanism. The timing could not have been worse. At precisely the moment we were urging the GOP to march in one direction, the great mass of conservatives and Republicans had turned on the double in the other, toward an ever more wild and even paranoid extremism. Those were the days of Glenn Beck’s 5 o’clock Fox News conspiracy rants, of Sarah Palin’s “death panels,” of Orly Taitz and her fellow Birthers, of Tea Party rallies at which men openly brandished assault rifles.
...
The post was called “Waterloo.” (The title played off a promise by then-senator and now Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint that the Affordable Care Act would become Obama’s Waterloo, a career-finishing defeat.)
...

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters—but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say—but what is equally true—is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed—if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office—Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

...
The next morning came a phone call inviting me to talk things over with AEI’s president. By Thursday, I was an ex-think-tank staffer.
...
Over the next seven years, Republicans would vote again and again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Total and permanent opposition to the law would become the absolute touchstone of Republican loyalty. Even Donald Trump, who dissented from so much of the old orthodoxy, retained this piece of the doxology. On the strength of their vow to eliminate the ACA, Republicans would win election after election, culminating in the stunning capture of all the elected branches of government in November 2016. From time to time, some old veteran would recall my 2010 prediction that the law would endure and smilingly wonder if I wished to reconsider.

I never did, for the reasons that the whole world has witnessed in real time over this week of Obamacare’s 7th anniversary.
...
In that third week in March in 2010, America committed itself for the first time to the principle of universal (or near universal) health-care coverage. That principle has had seven years to work its way into American life and into the public sense of right and wrong. It’s not yet unanimously accepted. But it’s accepted by enough voters—and especially by enough Republican voters—to render impossible the seven-year Republican vision of removing that coverage from those who have gained it under the Affordable Care Act. Paul Ryan still upholds the right of Americans to “choose” to go uninsured if they cannot afford to pay the cost of their insurance on their own. His country no longer agrees.

This was a point I and others argued back in the early days of the imperfect ACA. The ACA needs reform, but it's a foot in the door that is hard to dislodge. Once people have the benefits of such a system they are never going to voluntarily give it up, even if it took till the eleventh hour to convince people of its providence (and it came too late to win the election). The slow shift towards universal healthcare can only be a one-way path unless a party is willing to commit political suicide in stripping people of their coverage. The Republican rhetoric has only further doomed them in this case.


Anyway, going by both Trump and Ryan's words that's more or less it for healthcare during this Congress. We might see another attempt if there are, say, serious spikes in premiums or a genuine crisis, but I doubt it. We may even potentially see some of the opt-out states looking to opt into the Medicare expansion now the hope of repeal is fading.

Next up on the legislative agenda seems to be tax reform.


Jill Biden...

Ironically "pulling out" is the only method of birth control covered under the #AHCA. #Trumpcare #KillTheBill

Extremely indicative of the President's priorities;

White House officials, advisers say Trump is not that upset. He was far angrier about travel ban, Sessions recusal, inauguration crowd size.

[Strife26]

If everything Trump does ended up not doing anything, I think we'll be able to count this Administration as pretty damn good. Government that governs least and all that.

[palsch]

If everything Trump does ended up not doing anything, I think we'll be able to count this Administration as pretty damn good. Government that governs least and all that.

Maybe not when it comes to the State Department, EPA, DOE, FEMA, CDC, etc. A little competent government in important departments would be nice.

Doing very little (or succeeding in very little) can still do a lot of damage.

[Frumple]

If everything Trump does ended up not doing anything, I think we'll be able to count this Administration as pretty damn good. Government that governs least and all that.

... I'd disagree fairly strongly. It'd certainly be less bad and gods know I'd prefer it over most of what this administration will try to do, but the governs least thing is the exact bullshit that got us the current GOP in the first place, and a fucked government that has no choice but to drop any balls that come at us is precisely what things like the Freedom Caucus want our population to get screwed over by.

A paralyzed executive and/or legislative branch in the face of the various challenges and issues our country, and the Fed in particular, have on the table is only good in the sense that what the party in power would do would be worse than even that bad of a scenario. Which is to say there's nothing good about it, just less things bad. Let's not call the smaller disaster a good bargain.

The government that governs best governs best. Least is very conditional to the specific issue it's addressing. Get that was probably tongue in cheek to some degree, but gods fuck we could do with throwing that line of sentiment out of the public zeitgeist.

[palsch]

Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is under a criminal investigation for misuse of campaign funds.

Mr. Hunter “may have converted tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds from his congressional campaign committee to personal use to pay for family travel, flights, utilities, health care, school uniforms and tuition, jewelry, groceries, and other goods, services, and expenses,” said the ethics office, an independent body that House Republicans tried to shut down in January.

[Max™]

https://twitter.com/SenatorMenendez/status/845363015222542336

The internet response:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[misko27]

Well I think a statistic the NY Times noted recently sums things up: most House Republicans currently in office weren't in office before Barack Obama was sworn in as President. They actually do not know how to govern. (Alternately, that quote from Representative Mark Walker, Republican of North Carolina: "The champagne the Democrats didn't get to use in November is finally being opened")

I'm pretty sure that's a tabloid dude.

It's the Daily News. Its only virtue (which it shares with the pro-trump rag the NY Post) is eye-popping headlines. They had a more intense love affair with Weiner than Weiner's actual lovers.

This is the beginning of the end.

Well it's definitely the end of the beginning, at least. I think it's no longer safe to give the Republican House the benefit of the doubt with regards to passing major legislation. With Donald Trump and Paul Ryan bruised and the Freedom Caucus ascendant, we move on to the far more difficult issue of Tax Reform. I wonder if the people in charge of that will learn something from this debacle.

[redwallzyl]

anyone care to make a prediction as to when the old republican party will finally die? their is no way they can continue on with their idiotic policy of extremist economic neolibrilism fueled by propaganda. the bubbles got to burst. i look foreword to a saner future, eventually.

[Enemy post]

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

[Rolan7]

If everything Trump does ended up not doing anything, I think we'll be able to count this Administration as pretty damn good. Government that governs least and all that.

The problem is that a government which allows over-exploitation of natural resources, by "governing least", leads back to primitive times.  Feudalism at best, with the anarchs scraping by in the wilderness.

After a die off we literally have never seen, not even during the Black Death.

The Tragedy of The Commons isn't just "aw, it's hard for startups".  It's that we've invented algorithms which run on human wetware which naturally assume that "someone else" will handle all the ecological fallout they can get away with.  They're only in check, as long as there are fines which actually stop them.  And even if their behavior is felonious, that's just a couple *people* down - neurons.  Significant, but not as much as shareholder profits.

[smjjames]

Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is under a criminal investigation for misuse of campaign funds.

Mr. Hunter “may have converted tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds from his congressional campaign committee to personal use to pay for family travel, flights, utilities, health care, school uniforms and tuition, jewelry, groceries, and other goods, services, and expenses,” said the ethics office, an independent body that House Republicans tried to shut down in January.

Saw that a few days ago, thought about posting it but decided eh since it's not likely to make him resign. Any consequences will likely come at the ballotbox. And yes, I'm in that guys district.

anyone care to make a prediction as to when the old republican party will finally die? their is no way they can continue on with their idiotic policy of extremist economic neolibrilism fueled by propaganda. the bubbles got to burst. i look foreword to a saner future, eventually.

We are certainly overdue (or possibly on schedule, depending on who you talk to, historians aren't in agreement on when the next realignment after 1932 happened, or whether we are in the middle of one) for a political realignment. Although it's possible that the political realignment has been a long drawn out one.

[Frumple]

... it's also rather likely that pre-mass media/internet political history isn't the most stellar at predicting present day trends, heh. Not sure I'd put much weight behind history based attempts at identifying modern political patterns. Particularly any based in material that originated back before data gathering really started taking off.

[Flying Dice]

Absolutely the best case of dementia in the country.