With all respect to Frank Zappa, why do Republicans hate Democracy:
In short, despite the fact that no one believes some of the basic actuarial and fiscal assumptions that under-gird this legislation — no one who isn’t besotted with partisan fervor — it was rammed down the throats of the American people with as much cynicism, trickery, deliberate obfuscation, and budgetary tomfoolery as has ever been seen for a major piece of legislation in the history of the republic.
The bill was passed with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, as required by law and Senate rules. It was then passed in the House by majority rule and in accordance with all House Rules.
It was done so by a Democratic majority elected sixteen months ago along with a Democratic President who campaigned daily on Health Care reform, and who received the most votes in the history of American elections and won by the widest margin in decades.
The bill was crafted quite openly, after a year and a half of public debate, and the exact Senate bill that was passed in the House yesterday has been available for people to read and discuss for three entire months. This was the slowest, most open, most thoroughly discussed piece of legislation in my lifetime.
Anyone who says this was “rammed down” anyone’s throats simply does not know what they are talking about. But hey- ride that wave of anger Rick. It has really served the Republicans well so far.
Tuffy
Get a brain, Moran.
Bulworth
“…the first President to receive a majority of the vote in decades.”
Bush won with 51% in 2004.
Other than that, yes, Rick, keep the angry.
rob!
Stupid
moronmoran!cleek
Moran’s got his talkin points, and by-golly, he’s gonna use ’em.
Rahm It Down Mah Froat!
Brian J
First, I’d like to ask Republicans who question the financials of this legislation to describe their specific problems with the assumptions the CBO and other groups used. Repeating over and over that what they did was numerical lying isn’t good enough.
Second, I’d like to ask them how they can continue to claim that the American people don’t support the bill if they don’t entirely understand what’s in it, due in large part to the efforts of those who opposed it spreading misinformation or outright lies. It’s like asking people how to respond to a situation that isn’t supported by reality, and then expressing delight when they do: all you’ve done is prove that people don’t like a specific set of circumstances. That’s fine, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s not what the actual legislation does.
John Cole
@Bulworth: Oops. Fixt.
Bulworth
“…no one believes the fiscal assumptions…”
Yeah, no one except the CBO and people who tend to follow CBO’s projections, which is no one except the entire policy community.
geg6
These guys are just completely OBSESSED with blow job metaphors, anal sex fantasies, and bondage fetishes. I used to think the Rude Pundit went overboard sometimes. But now that I pay more attention to what these people actually discuss amongst themselves, rather than keeping myself aloof and ignorant of their in-talk, it is so apparent that an awful lot of their anger and aggression is just about sexual inadequacy and repression.
Sickest fucks around, as far as I can tell.
goblue72
This has been a glorious Monday morning watching the rank-and-file wingnutters choke on the taste of Obama’s Chicago-sized teabags, while the “leaders” of the wingnut movement in Congress and the media woke up and realized “they’re gonna have healthcare wrapped up by April with some EPIC WIN, which means they still got 6 months to smack Wall Street around and hand out some goodies. (oh crap they slipped in student loan reform with HCR) and if Obama starts bringing the troops home from Iraq by Labor Day….oh double crap, we may be toast”
I hear Obama is toying with immigration reform on the agenda – split the Repubs in two and watch the nativist teabagging right go “all-in” on the racism fail-sauce in time for the november elections.
mcc
But we said no, and it passed anyway!
Violet
Republicans only like democracy when it produces the results they want. If it doesn’t, then it’s not democracy.
Brian J
@geg6:
Specifically, spanking. I’m curious, who will be the first person to claim that Obama/Reid/Pelosi needs to be put over Boehner’s knee to be told who is boss?
scav
Some days, you just get the feeling they’d be baffled by the mechanical principles of a see-saw.
goblue72
@geg6: Its always the overweight, white pasty socially incompetent guys who have the sickest porn fetishes. And from what I can tell, the modern GOP is the party of the overweight pasty male dorks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I haven’t been wanting to say it out loud, even to type it, but I have been thinking for the last few weeks that Republicans peaked too early. They’re in Houston ’92 territory, and the face of the party is screaming, incoherent paranoids and flat-out racists who make Pat Buchanan look like George Will. Not that I think Dems won’t lose seats, but I think takeover is less likely than ever, much less a so-called ‘tsunami’.
mcc
@Brian J: But the CBO double-counted six months of benefits as ten years of taxes on an unfunded mandate!
With the CBO it’s garbage in, garbage out, and the CBO gave MY bill an excellent score!
Robin G.
@mcc: I expect the two-year-old sleeping in the next room to start screaming “Tyrany!” any day now.
Bill E Pilgrim
Yep, for them this thing was a killer, baby.
Wait …do I have that backwards?
Damn, I can never speak Wingnut correctly.
Where’s Barbara Billingsley when you need her…
David in NY
A little late, but might as well vote.
By the way, is this there a reverse of the “crazification factor” at Fox? Maybe the “reality based” factor? On the Fox poll, 27% think HCR is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/03/21/decide-health-care-victory-america/
Common Sense
Man Hannity is on fire. He went in two sentences from claiming Pelosi is the most partisan Speaker in modern history to a quote from Newt Gingrich. Didn’t bat an eye.
Brian J
@mcc:
What?
mistersnrub
GOPers are a party full of Tobias Funckes – nearly everything they say betrays their latent homosexual tendencies. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, of course.
Mustang Bobby
Some days, you just get the feeling they’d be baffled by the mechanical principles of a see-saw.
I think if someone had showed up with a laser pointer in the House gallery and pointed it at the wall, we could have distracted the entire Republican caucus throughout the entire debate.
cyntax
If I can get less of Karl Rove and Michelle Malkin talking about ramming things down people’s throats, HCR will be double win.
Now shouldn’t somebody be looking to move his residence to Costa Rica…?
The Moar You Know
Sounds like someone’s upset that Obama didn’t personally ram his huge package down his throat.
At 2am.
In a poorly lit public restroom.
evie
I’m so relieved we dropped the Deem & Pass idea. Not because it isn’t valid, but because it would have given the nutcases one more handful of sand to throw in the faces of the American people.
This paragraph from Moran sounds like it was written before D&P was decided against.
Go Dems!
scav
@David in NY: Yoikes, it’s a Crazifacation Fractal!
Punchy
You libtards are idiots. This reform bill isn’t even legal since it was passed without any Republican sponsorship, which is clearly required if you Dumbocrats ever read the Constitution. Also, Repubs hate it, so its doubly illegal. Watch for the USSC to rule in this favor by May.
Brian J
@Common Sense:
I asked a conservative friend last night who questioned my claim that Pelosi is now among greats, at least for us liberals, because of what she accomplished what, exactly, DeLay, Livingston, and Gingrich accomplished, aside from massive electoral losses, sex scandals, and ethics violations. I am still waiting to hear a response.
jeffreyw
Rick Moran sez: Dammit! Get back! It’s a soshulist trick! Go forth and earn yer own damn keep!
David in NY
@goblue72:
You sound like someone who has experience attending criminal sentencings of kiddie porn offenders.
scav
@Mustang Bobby: They would have been adorable jumping about trying to catch the red dot though, no? Just slightly? Maybe? Teeny little bit?
geg6
@Mustang Bobby:
LOL! You owe me a new keyboard!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Fixited.
David in NY
@scav:
:)
Common Sense
Holy crap there’s a Conservative Victory tour next week Hannity is pimping on his show (the book is also titled “Conservative Victory”), tied into his new book. That’s some stellar timing Sean.
mcc
@Brian J:
::gestures animatedly toward a giant posterboard covered in bar graphs::
Maude
@Mustang Bobby: If you had two pointers and moved them in opposite directions, wouldn’t that be fun?
Bulworth
I’m almost starting to wonder if the whole “deem and pass” thing was run up the flag pole just to see wingnuts heads explode and get them to spend a couple of valuable days bitching even more about “process” issues. In military terms I think this is called a “diversion” or “decoy”. I dunno. If Repubs had been focused on substantive rather than process issues, maybe this would have all played out differently. But it ended up working all the same.
Dino
Associating Republicans with deviant sexual practices is insulting to the latter. I demand a retraction!
David in NY
Yeah, was there any point to deem and pass? I thought that was what they were doing and was a little confused when I first heard there were separate votes on the rule and then on the substance. Not sure why that might have been seen as more desirable.
Martian Buddy
Speaking of their contempt for the legislative process and the will of the people, the next battle in the war on wingnuttery is shaping up:
Just like health care reform–a legislative crapflood to jam up the works as long as possible in hopes of further watering down the legislation and chipping away at support for it.
David in NY
@Martian Buddy:
Oh, well, I’m sure they’ll all be extremely embarrassed when CNN points out what they’re doing. (Not. Not.)
Martian Buddy
@Bulworth: That seems counter-productive to me. The GOP has been trying their hardest to portray the process of passing HCR as somehow illegitimate in order to justify their inevitable attempt at repealing it. “Deem and pass” plays right into that.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that the Democratic party ducked right into a punch.
SteveinSC
Yes, secret, rammed down throats, cynicism, trickery. It was a fucking miracle that the repukes were able to add more than 100 amendments to a bill that was so craftily concealed. Maybe it was the 100 monkeys on the typewriters or maybe the old kid’s game of Battleships: “A5, B4,C3,and D4” Kabloohey! ! ! One “tort reform amendment”, one “save the unborn” amendment and “two tax breaks for weathy doctors” amendment. Just pure luck I guess.
JPhillips
You’re missing a ram it.
eastriver
Perfectly stated, JC. Well-written. Huzzah. Keep it up.
KDP
@Violet: Wingnuts, too. Like this from freerepublic re: Executive Orders: It’s bad (when the other guy does it.) Not when we do it. …
Chuck Butcher
Must have been a slip of the keyboard – you know what he meant, “Real American people.”
scav
Just remember. Submitting amendments and getting them incorporated into the gizmo is NOT evidence of bipartisan behavior. The only thing that counts is the grandstanding at the end.
Rick Taylor
I keep thinking back to how the Iraq war started. It was kind of like being in one of those dreams where you know there’s a monster in the closet, and your parents won’t believe you, and they’re smiling and laughing as they’re about to open the door.
__
Maybe it’s because I’m biased, but I just don’t remember liberals carrying on the way conservatives are now; certainly not elected officials. You guys had your way for six years, you got to start your war, we all ponied up hundreds of billions for it and the consequences were everything we feared. Now it’s our turn. If you’re unhappy about the situation, maybe you should sit down and reflect how you screwed things up so badly you couldn’t even get enough members to filibuster reform when you needed to.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Don’t forget the Don’t Count Our Guns amendment.
I shizzle you not.
KDP
@mcc: Exactly, Rove showed me a nice whiteboard just chockfull of numbers while he was interrupting Plouffe repeatedly on the Sunday circuit.
It was very cool to hear Rove spluttering incoherently while Plouffe sat, cool as a cucumber, pointing out the facts.
Brian J
@mcc:
Sorry if I am being too literal, but which graphs are you referring to?
geg6
@Martian Buddy:
I dunno, dude.
I’m thinking they might be a bit delusional if they think people don’t want reform of financial institutions. I really don’t think they can fool people about death panels and such about banks. They’ve already been through the equivalent of death panels when it comes to banks: foreclosure and bankruptcy and NSF fees and shrinking 401Ks and 5% APRs suddenly skyrocketing to 29%.
I don’t think even teabaggers will have much passion to go around for the bankers, asswipe CNBC whiner and original teabagger Rick Santelli notwithstanding.
Chuck Butcher
@geg6:
You’ll be surprised at how this will be played as kowtowing to the cheating losers and killing free markets quite successfully. You have noticed the voting patterns of the past 30yrs in the face of own advantage.
mcc
@Brian J: Brian, I am sorry, I have been trying to do my impersonation of Paul Ryan yesterday.
(The thing about pointing out you can get the CBO to give total garbage a good score by manipulating the data you feed it, and then bragging about having gotten a good score from the CBO in the next sentence, is incidentally a more or less direct paraphrase.)
Brian J
@mcc:
Yikes. I thought you were kidding, but I wasn’t sure. Time to go back to bed?
(I thought you said Ron Paul and was about to type “sure” as “shore” and “type” as “tipe.”
Tony J
I had the very great pleasure of waking up this morning and watching the BBC Morning News cover the passage of Health Care Reform in America, with the expert assistance of one Charlie Wolf (I think), who was introduced with a knowing wink as “a Republican”.
He proceeded to tell us that this was really bad news for Democrats, because the election in Massachussetts proved that Americans have already rejected the ‘Democrat’ Health Care plan as an infringement on their liberties, and that it was going to plunge the nation into debt.
When it was pointed out that the CBO had said the legislation would reduce the deficit, Wolf used exactly that argument (“With the CBO it’s garbage in, garbage out”) to dismiss their scoring as irrelevant.
Oh, and the fact that every other western democracy finds it pretty easy to run much more ‘socialistic’ health care systems at a fraction of the cost of America’s purely private version doesn’t prove anything either, because Charlie Wolf – representing a political party that recently got its backside booted out of power in favour of a black guy who campaigned on reforming the US health care system – knows that Americans just love their current system, which allows them to be independent free-spirits or something.
And I’m sitting there thinking, “You’ve got a Democratic President, the Democrats in Congress have a huge majority, and the only person the BBC can find to provide expert opinion on the historic passage of one of the Democratic Party’s longest-held policy goals is a fucking Republican called Charlie Wolf?”
Seriously, your News Media might be less use than dirty pictures at a stripclub, but ours is trying very, very hard to catch up.
Brian J
@Tony J:
Greg Mankiw had a post a day or so ago saying it was unclear how the tax increases would affect the economy. That’s a legitimate question. I wish he would elaborate more, but still, it’s far above the sort of “LALALALALALALALALA I DUNNNN CARRREEEE WHAT YOU SAY!” response most on the right had to the CBO numbers.
Jeff
@geg6
You know.. all this talk of “ramming” and ‘jamming’ and “tea bagging” are getting John Boehner and Rick Moran all hot and bothered… somebody get a firehose!
Martian Buddy
@geg6: From what I’ve seen of the foreclosure rescue plan, the wingnut narrative is that the housing meltdown and subsequent Great Recession is all the fault of the Community ReInvestment Act forcing the banks to make sub-prime loans to greedy housing flippers and shiftless “urban poor” who got loans for McMansions through ACORN. As shameless as they are, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they not only defend the banksters, but call for more
cowbellderegulation as the solution to our financial woes.C Nelson Reilly
@JPhillips:
I noticed that too. The teabaggers are crying tiny sick tears
Little Dreamer
@geg6:
Oh, noes! We’re not back to discussing anal rape again, are we? I was hoping we’d moved on from that.
::bangs head on desk::
Peter J
The Newspaper front pages you get when you pass the bill. (via Ezra)
Claudia
Sure it was passed with all the parliamentary pomp and ceremony: after Obama sold out the Public Option behind closed doors.
Hear any gnashing of teeth from the Insurance or Pharma industries? didn’t think so.
Mikeg
JC — Fantastic, tight little post.
Aw, I knew you’d be surprised…
gwangung
@Claudia: Claudia, meet Kairol.
Ruckus
@scav:
@Mustang Bobby:
After all the time and stress of this process it’s nice to see that not all of us lost our sense of humor.
bemused
@Brian J:
Not to mention the Medicare drug plot that Delay rammed down senior citizens throats.
Little Dreamer
@Peter J:
Interesting link Peter, thanks. I looked at all the headlines, and it seems the only two papers that addressed the unhappiness of the GOP with the results were the paper I delivered to my customers last night (quite a few Repubs in that crowd so that was a pleasure ::wink::) and the paper from my birthplace (hmmm, strange coincidence??).
MaximusNYC
REPUBLICANS TURNED OFF BY SIZE OF OBAMA’S PACKAGE
Alan
Perhaps Rick Moran’s only view of what’s happening is Washington is through the Fox News, NRO, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck lens.
john b
@Martian Buddy:
you seem to be missing the fact that they dodged much of the late criticism on reconciliation with the deem and pass talk. and then they dropped the deem and pass talk in the end while republicans were still just bitching about that.
srv
FYI, Faith No More is touring again, so maybe we should recycle more of their themes to modern political blogging.
mcc
You want it all but you can’t have it
It’s in your face but you can’t grab it?
Mike in NC
You just know that every major newspaper and weekly magazine in the country was ready to run their version of the “Obama’s Waterloo” story if the bill failed. This is more like “Dewey Defeats Truman”.
Also enjoyed seeing Orange Boehner’s face turn purple with rage and indignation. Would only have been better had he collapsed and they called in the paramedics.
Lynne
I love that my 22, and 23yr. old have health insurance and you’ll are footin’ the bill. I’m takin’ a vacation with the money I will save, Las Vegas here I come. Thanks to Obama and thank you too!
DougW
@ Lynne
And we thank you Lynne, since you’ll be paying slightly higher premiums for your 22 and 23 year old kids, rather than having them go without insurance until they secure gainful employment. Everybody wins.
Robert Waldmann
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v296/rjw88/?action=view¤t=get_a_brain_morans.jpg
Oh and as for whether anyone at all believes the CBO forecasts Rick don’t mess with Elmendorf
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v296/rjw88/?action=view¤t=bewaredoug.gif
Elie
@Lynne:
Lynne —
When we care about all our citizens, it includes your children. Your mother, father and sister and brother too. Oh, maybe we don’t personally know them, or like YOU especially. But we care about you and them as citizens and we know that the fabric of what makes this nation great is about keeping us strong and safe beyond guns and making war (which might be a tad more sophisticated logic for you, but stretch a bit)
I am not sure where your values and personal ideals became distorted to believe that it was somehow better that in a country as rich and blessed as this, that anyone should have to suffer from lack of basic health care, food and shelter, but that seems to be what your soul is about. Maybe things got twisted up inside of you when the thought that we are all equal and have rights under the law became more prominent. Maybe you just couldnt handle that.
Whatever. Your children matter. Hopefully, long after your sad spirit has passed on, they will assert the positive and hopeful sense of having been supported and cared about by all the people in this country, white, black, yellow, brown and whatever — that many people of all stripes “got their back”. I tell you, that is what I believe in and the image that gives me complete pleasure…
So have a great time on your vacation. We got this.
Morfydd
@Lynne: Oh, that must be such a relief to you! I know when I graduated from college and couldn’t find a job that gave me health insurance, my Republican parents were terribly worried, and we jumped through a lot of hoops so that I could get onto their insurance.
You might be a bit confused, though – at this point you would be covering your kids’ insurance, not us, as any subsidies you might be eligible for sadly haven’t kicked in yet.
But it’s great that you and your loved ones will be able to have health care without the fear of bankruptcy. We’re all very happy for you and proud of the legislation that helps with that.
Lynne
I said thank-you. This is a great country we live in, when we can share the wealth of those that have planned for their futures, work 12+hrs.days, saved, and did not squander their money, those fat cat types. I may not have done those things,(not my own fault though) but does that mean me and my grown children don’t deserve a lift up?NO, I want to share in the spoils, it’s my country too! Now, it’s time to help the dealers, hotel workers, waiters,entertainers, and the other hard working people in this country.(Vegas for me) You have to stimulate the economy. I do plan on working for a few years, retiring early, and letting someone take my place in the workforce too. Please don’t begrudge me of enjoying myself and helping others at the same time. We all give back in different ways, it’s just that mine is the craps table.