Townhall.com
Dennis Prager |Posted: Mar 28, 2017


According to The New York Times, 10 moderates, 15 conservatives, and eight other Republicans would have voted against the Republican repeal and replace Obamacare bill. So, then, 15 or so conservatives made it impossible to pass the bill favored by nearly every other Republican and by President Donald Trump. If that is the case, what we have here is another conservative example of purism and principle damaging another major opportunity to do good.

The first purist conservative example were the Never-Trumpers, who believed it was better for Hillary Clinton to be elected president and for the Left to have four more years of presidential power than for Donald Trump to win.

There were valid reasons to wonder whether Donald Trump was a conservative, and valid reasons to oppose him in the primaries. There were no valid reasons to oppose him in the general election. I said all these things then, and have thus far been validated beyond my wildest dreams.

In terms of policy, Donald Trump is a conservative dream. From appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, to approving the Keystone XL pipeline, to weakening the fanatical, hysterical, and tyrannical EPA, to appointing an ambassador to the United Nations who has moral contempt for that immoral institution, to backing Israel, to seeking to reduce economy-choking regulations on business – indeed essentially everything conservatives would wish for in a president – Donald Trump is almost too good to be true.

But he’s still not good enough for those conservatives who remain Never-Trumpers or good enough for the House members of Freedom Caucus, at least with regard to the repeal and replace Obamacare bill that President Trump worked so hard to have passed.

It is quite possible that I and most other conservatives who supported the repeal bill agree with just about every criticism of the bill that House conservatives made.

But, just as in the general election the question wasn't whether candidate Trump was our ideal, the question now wasn’t whether the bill was our ideal. The question during the election was: What will happen if the Democrats and the Left win the presidency again? And the question now was and remains: What will happen if the Republicans don’t pass a bill favored by all but 25-30 Republican Congressmen and, most important, by President Trump?

But purists don’t ask such questions. They live in a somewhat different world than the rest of us who actually agree with them on everything. Because we don’t ask what is ideologically pure and true to our principles. We ask: What is closest to our ideology and to our principles?

Or, to put it another way, we have one larger principle than even the conservative ones we share with the purists – defeating the left because that is the No. 1 priority of those who cherish Western Civilization and regard America as the last best hope for humanity.


The conservative Never-Trumpers and conservatives who voted for Trump had everything in common except for that overriding principle. Conservatives who voted for Trump believed that defeating the Left is the overriding moral good of our time. We are certain that the Left (not the traditional liberal) is destroying Western Civilization, including, obviously, the United States. The external enemy of Western Civilization are the Islamists (the tens or perhaps hundreds of million of Muslims who wish to see the world governed by Sharia), and the internal enemy of the West is the left. What the left has done to the universities and to Western culture at the universities is a perfect example.

Passing even a tepid first bill to begin the process of dismantling the crushing burden of Obamacare would have been an important first step in weakening the left – not only by beginning to repeal Obamacare but by strengthening the Trump presidency and the president’s ability to go forward with tax-reform and other parts of his conservative agenda. The president is now damaged, and the Republican Party looks ludicrous – what other word can one use to describe the party that passed 60 resolutions in seven years to repeal Obamacare and then can’t pass a bill to repeal or replace Obamacare when it is given the House, the Senate, and the presidency?

Make no mistake, ye of pure heart, this may well be the last time in your lifetimes that Republicans control both Houses of Congress and have a conservative president. And understand that time is not on our side; there are congressional elections in a year and nine months.

Providence or luck made it possible to have a conservative president. Act accordingly.

And perhaps consider inscribing on the walls of your House and Senate offices a motto as relevant as “In God We Trust” – “The Best Is the Enemy of the Better.”

Link

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Townhall.com
Dennis Prager |Posted: Mar 28, 2017


......Make no mistake, ye of pure heart, this may well be the last time in your lifetimes that Republicans control both Houses of Congress and have a conservative president. And understand that time is not on our side; there are congressional elections in a year and nine months.

That's what's depressing to think of.

Nice to hear from you Jim!

Through the brown haze of bullshit surrounding Washington DC, it's hard to tell if the bill would really have reduced costs and improved services, especially for the elderly. Waiting for a second and third element to be formulated and passed won't do it for those of us who don't trust them, so I'm thinking it was a good thing the bill failed. Trump's heart and head are in the right place, and he'll get it done if he (and we) remain patient.

Once Gorshuch is confirmed, I'm hoping things will go better as well. With the SCOTUS back in balance we'll at least be assured of a fair chance that the right bill will succeed.

Having said all that, the Government never should have taken over the health insurance industry in the first place. Obamacare came about because of industry abuses, which should have been addressed of course, but as far as I'm concerned, Trump should have kept to his original promise to repeal Obamacare and never even considered replacing it.

quote:

Make no mistake, ye of pure heart, this may well be the last time in your lifetimes that Republicans control both Houses of Congress and have a conservative president..

There writes a man with seriously fuzzy definitions of 'control'

Yes, the Rs have the votes in Congress. They can't figure out how write bills that appeal to enough of their bloc to get the math to work.

In other words, they are not yet adept at governing. They were OK at putting brakes on things during the prior administration. Well, they got passable at it, eventually. And they hopefully will get good at governing eventually too.

But the task in the meantime is not to drug the Freedom Caucus into submission. It is to write bills worthy of support from the whole bloc.

Mr. Prager seems to think the one necessary and sufficient act is jumping on a Trump bandwagon, when the actual task is to get a good bandwagon together.

Prager's analysis only works if all you're counting is elected officials and a handful of establishment-oriented pundits. If you count the vocal majority of R voters this time around and almost universally the so-called "talk show mafia" (Breitbart, Wilkow, Hannity, Limbaugh, Levin, etc.) who collectively provide a platform for our voices, the establishment GOP is pretty clearly in the minority.

-Rob

First of all, the other 18 Reps get no credit or blame for voting against it either? I am not sure which of the freedom caucus are never trumpers, but according to the article, you would think they all were.
That is not the truth. I happen to have had some conversations with one of the members and know that he supports Trump.....but just not half the country paying for health insurance for the other half and also to include insurance for illegals here in this country. Is this the bill we needed??? No, it was not that much different from obamacare. These guys did not want their names on that piece of crap, and I for one do not blame them, I applaud them and will tell my Rep when I see him. He may not be a big man, but he has guts to stand up for what he thinks is right.

This subject has been on my mind too. Today I wrote my congressmen expressing my disappointment that Republicans lack sufficient unity to pass a repeal and replacement bill through the House. Its not that they havent had sufficient time to come up with an alternative. I also noted that the last time we had a Republican in the executive and majorities in both houses (George W Bush, 2003), the Republicans failed to make any progress in reducing the deficit, stopping the growth of government or achieving any decisive progress in the Middle East. I fear a repeat of 2003.

MY expectations for this new Republican majority are stopping the growth of government, reducing taxes for individuals and corporations, encouraging economic growth and employment via the private sector, and making America energy independent.

I sincerely hope that they do not waste this opportunity.

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He may not be a big man, but he has guts to stand up for what he thinks is right.

All the guts in the world aren't much good without some brains to go with it. Any concessions the so-called freedom caucus was able to win in the bill voted on will most likely be lost in a bill that will be passed with necessary democratic votes. they did more bad than good with their action.

Thought-provoking.

But, it still remains to be seen what will result from all of this.

When running as a candidate, President Trump showed an uncanny ability to take defeat right to the teeth only to adapt and march on.

Overall, I see this as a good defeat for Ryan. He tried the old ways of privately writing a bill with lobbyists without listening to an opposition. That stunk of the GOPe to me. Candidate Trump said he needed to take them on too.

Maybe failure sets the stage for a string of victories now that the old guard has embarrassed itself so "biggly."

I'm really torn on this one. I have great respect for Dennis Prager; on the other hand I also respect Tom Cotton, who pleaded with the House GOP not to rush that sucker through. Then Mike Lee apparently found out the whole premise of structuring the bill around doing it all through reconciliation was something that could be overruled by the President of the Senate--i.e. Mike Pence.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
I'm really torn on this one. I have great respect for Dennis Prager; on the other hand I also respect Tom Cotton, who pleaded with the House GOP not to rush that sucker through. Then Mike Lee apparently found out the whole premise of structuring the bill around doing it all through reconciliation was something that could be overruled by the President of the Senate--i.e. Mike Pence.

I tend to agree. I think they saw a small opening, and attempted to rush this entire thing through, almost like the "Affordable Care Act" was rushed through.

We had the ACA rammed down our throats and were told "Pass it to see what is in it."

It was similar to what happened here, except the R's weren't beholden to a partisan vote and had their existence threatened if they didn't vote for it like last time.

They SHOULD have taken their time, and come up with a legitimate replacement.

But again, this is THE EXACT SAME THING I have been harping on for 10 years. The Republican party is ALMOST as fragile as the Democrat party.

The Democrat party has been held together by a very loose coalition of commies, identity politics driven idealogues, single issue voters, uneducated voters, overeducated voters, and "suckers" who have swallowed the false promises...

THe Republican party is not any better. We get the hardcore christians, the wacky right wing conspiracy theorists, the single issue 2a voters, the Tea Party folks who would cut off their nose to spite their face, and the fiscal conservatives who while generally correct, can't actually take control of the various factions.

We need BOTH parties to implode at this point.

The best thing to happen to this country is every one of them to cease to exist and take their shill media outlets with them.

As a rule, Dennis is right about purists in a conflicted messy democratic system. But in this case, I think it is better in the long run that this bill failed. I suspect it would have slowed the carnage but transferred ownership of it to the Republicans. Therein is the greater damage. This congress does need to pass something before the mid term, but it should be the right thing.

Glad to see you back!

quote:

I think they saw a small opening, and attempted to rush this entire thing through, almost like the "Affordable Care Act" was rushed through.

We had the ACA rammed down our throats and were told "Pass it to see what is in it."

It was similar to what happened here, except the R's weren't beholden to a partisan vote and had their existence threatened if they didn't vote for it like last time.

Yep.

Also at townhall.com today:

The Cure for the Cure: Fixing Health Care Properly
Ed Feulner
Posted: Mar 29, 2017

“This is not the end of the debate.” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said that on ABC’s “This Week” regarding the House leadership’s failed health care bill, and he’s exactly right.

Even President Trump, as he was voicing disappointment over its legislative fate, couldn’t help noting “what’s going to come out of it is a better bill.”

That’s the key. The president and many other lawmakers campaigned on a clear-cut promise to repeal Obamacare. And while the House leadership’s bill did contain some good features, it simply failed to do the job. It left many of the law’s most damaging regulations in place.

Obamacare can’t be fixed. An overhaul, however much of an improvement it might appear to be, isn’t what we need (let alone what was promised). The so-called “Affordable Care Act” has to be cut out root and branch.

It has to be done right because people are really hurting. They’re facing steeply higher premiums and deductibles, for one thing. According to a Gallup poll, Those paying some or all of their health premiums increasingly say their premiums have gone up (74 percent in 2015, up from 67 percent in 2014).

They also have fewer health plans to choose from. An increased regulatory burden has driven some providers from the market. That’s part of the reason that President Obama’s promise that if you like your doctor or plan, you can keep it rings so hollow. For many Americans, that hasn’t been their experience at all.

Plus, notes health care expert Ed Haislmaier, Obamacare allows people to wait until they need medical care to enroll in coverage. This effectively destabilized the individual insurance market. It created an adverse-selection process that helped jack up premiums, “as the law’s “carrot-and-stick” approach of low-income subsidies coupled with a fine for not buying coverage failed to enroll enough healthy individuals,” he writes.

Sure, the House leadership bill would’ve repealed several of Obamacare’s insurance regulations, such as the age-rating restrictions that artificially inflate premiums for young adults. But the law’s federal coverage mandates would have remained intact.

The first attempt at Obamacare repeal may well have failed, according to Haislmaier, because lawmakers lost sight of the “why.” We need to remind ourselves why many people are having a bad experience with Obamacare: Its basic construct is untenable. Its purpose, he writes, was to “take control of private health plans and convert them into off-budget extensions of federal programs.”

Don’t take it from me. Take it from one of its supporters, Sara Rosenbaum, who in 2010 wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that Obamacare “transforms health insurance into a public accommodation,” and turns private health insurance into “a regulated industry … that, in its restructured form, will therefore take on certain characteristics of a public utility.”

Yes, a public utility. Americans didn’t sign up for that. They wanted (and still want) reform that gives them greater control over their own health care, not a government-run system.

As Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said after the House leadership bill was pulled, “Let’s stop doing the blame game and get back to work and do what we told the American people we were going to accomplish, which is repeal Obamacare and replace it with a patient-centered health care program.”

As Mark Meadows said, the debate is far from over. We now have a chance to go back to the drawing board and do this right. The American people deserve a genuine cure. Will we give it to them?

https://townhall.com/columnist...re-properly-n2305414

"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
The NRA has made tremendous progress over the years by getting something passed that moves the ball in the right direction but often is less than what they or we really want.
The purists are going for the Hail Mary pass thinking they can win it all in one shot.
Even if they had been successful, whatever that may have meant, there would have been tweaking of the law as we went along.

Paraphrased from this morning speaking with Cavuto:

quote:

"Americans only provided 17% support of the AHCA.

The Democrats lost the house in 1994 under Hilarycare, and then they lost more in 2010,2012 and 2014 under Obamacare.

When less than 4/5 Americans won't get behind something, no politician is going to support it."

~Newt Gingrich

I believe that is a fair and valid point. Furthermore, you can't put key issues into "future" Phase 2, and 3 when the public has no faith in the legislature.

Moreso, the senate reconciliation process is a very complex process, and no one outside of DC understood it very well. Rush L. did a good job explaining it, but most Americans can't tell you who the VP is, much less the SCOTUS members, much less beans about reconciliation.


There was no reason they had to start with this effort (start with Infrastructure and build some common ground; establish some reasonable working relationships that bring in all stakeholders), force an artificial timeline, and suck-ass at communicating a complicated mess, adhering to legacy and arcane Senate rules and processes. Just a mess they brought upon themselves.

Welcome back Jim Allen;


I agree with Prager.

We have made the perfect enemy of the good. After 6+ years of implementation of Obamacare, simply repealing it without making provisions for transition would result in chaos.

We are not going to get a perfect bill because law writing is done by humans.

The moderate democrat is an oxymoron, the dems will not agree with anything you and I could support.

The GOP is fractured to the point that pleasing the current hold outs will result in a similar sized group refusing to support a new bill.

What seems strange to me is that those strong supporters of Trump on this forum are unwilling to trust him. I was equivocal about Trump in the primaries but I think he has done an excellent job so far. Why do we think we know more about what can be done than Trump does?

Nuts, that article is pure bs, the one small group didn't stop the bill from being passed, Ryan and his minons did a poor job of drafting a bill that would do what Americans want, delete the ACA for good.

like we saw above 17% of Americans, D, R, I didn't like the bill, this was a deathwish for the party bill, Trump, Ryan et al made a mistake rushing this and hopefully Trump learned a lesson on how things work in DC.

Repeal it, then replace it, part of me says repeal it and leave it alone...

I don't think that health care can be fixed at all until the insurance and hospital companies are basically regulated to the point that they can't get away with anything. I dealt with a couple of insurance companies when my mother got close to the end, and friends of mine have and are going through the same things. Like what? Paying for tests never done. They do this all the time. My mom only had it happen a couple of times for minor procedures, but friend's parents have seen totally bogus tests and procedures THAT NEVER HAPPENED paid for by their insurance companies. Of course, the patient has to pay the deductible for these things that were never done. Seriously, the only way out of the health care mess that I can see working is that everyone has to have it, no exceptions, and pay a certain amount per year, with say a 10% co-pay. I don't see how anything else is going to really work. The Republican bill that was withdrawn was worse than the ACA for a lot of people.

quote:

Originally posted by oldRoger:
Welcome back Jim Allen;


I agree with Prager.

We have made the perfect enemy of the good. After 6+ years of implementation of Obamacare, simply repealing it without making provisions for transition would result in chaos.

We are not going to get a perfect bill because law writing is done by humans.

The moderate democrat is an oxymoron, the dems will not agree with anything you and I could support.

The GOP is fractured to the point that pleasing the current hold outs will result in a similar sized group refusing to support a new bill.

What seems strange to me is that those strong supporters of Trump on this forum are unwilling to trust him. I was equivocal about Trump in the primaries but I think he has done an excellent job so far. Why do we think we know more about what can be done than Trump does?

We won't end up with a perfect bill because the ideas of what that is varies all over the place. Legislation is passed by consensus, which means rarely will it be exactly right to everyone that votes for it.

Purists, seldom a majority, can sometimes be ignored, but here where the pragmatists are neatly evenly divided, can prevent any solution. The Republican Party particularly has been plagued by purists of one stripe or another.