Tidal Forces
Social Networks in the U.S. Senate Hat-tip to Ezra Klein.
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-“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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References

There's your core group of Republicans that you failed to work with, Democrats. The result: Crashed and burned agenda.
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)"Senator Snowe -- this could happen to you, except with your primary voters as well as the folks in the general."
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| parent ).
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| parent )Yep, there were no efforts whatsoever to woo Olympia Snowe during this process. None at all. Indeed, we didn't spend a month on her will-she-or-won't-she dithering.
I deeply enjoy these outbursts of grievance. Truly, there is no group more oppressed than conservatives.
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| parent )thinking that a strategy of getting one GOPer to flip would be successful. This may be challenging to grasp, but real bipartisanship means finding common ground first and going from there. Consider Medicare Part D as an historical reference.
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| parent )But I think it's worth repeating. If you want to make a deal...
1. You don't rile up your base. That just makes them turn on you if you do make a deal.
2. You set a target. If Dems get to such and such a place, we can talk about supporting the bill.
The Republicans (with the exception of Snowe for a little while in the summer) followed neither of these guidelines.
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| parent )Republicans want a bill, just not that bill. Dan McLaughlin is one of the smarter Redstate bears, and he explains. The bottom line is that conservatives "work around the margins rather than launch a massive federal takeover of the whole shebang that rewrites every aspect of the system from Washington with no possible way to anticipate how all those changes will play out." This is the prevailing sentiment of those on the right.
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| parent )is defined as "BD."
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| parent )of everything it wants to control. When it takes over, it gets rid of the regulators. These they call Damnable Bureaucrats. In this way, they concentrate power in themselves by empowering their corporate constituencies, who then close and power the circuit with campaign contributions.
Government thus sells itself off to the highest bidder.
You may think this is a good thing, that government gets out of the way, that by putting designer bandages over treatable cancers they have cured the patient. All this nonsense about the Bill, the GOP played the FUD game, and that's all it is, you said so yourself: "that rewrites every aspect of the system from Washington with no possible way to anticipate how all those changes will play out."
That's FUD. It's perfectly obvious something must be done about our appalling health statistics. It's a measure of our culture, of our nation. We're right down there with some of the more-odious dictatorships on our live birth statistics. The government does have a role to play, of regulation and disbursement, and all the GOP can say is what they've always said: Death to the Bureaucrats. It's the stupidest thing in the world.
Laws without regulators are no laws at all. The absence of regulators does not make a market free. Haven't the GOP screwed up the world enough with their deregulation? When will you guys get the point here: the GOP is interested only in enriching their cronies. Every policy move they make only damages the economy. Demanding more tax cuts, what a bunch of innumerate idiots. Everyone who votes GOP is voting against his own economic interests.
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| parent )the GOP did nothing about this when they were in the majority - nothing. The idea that the bill as it's presently constituted is a government takeover of everything is also BS. The bill does more to preserve the current system than anything else.
Just stick with the Republican line that the American system is the best in the world. When you get away from the propaganda it just doesn't ring true.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Yes, you are totally going to be persuasive to sane people by linking to RedState.
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| parent )I acknowledge that I won't be persuasive to bigoted people. Because their minds are made up.
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| parent )You see, you're equating "sane" with "bigoted" in this sentence! And, to me, it actually makes a lot of sense that a conservative would see them as equivalent, so . . . wait, I don't get it again.
Maybe you can explain it.
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| parent )given that no Republican health care proposal was floated until halfway through the process, what is it that Dems were supposed to compromise with?
The Republican position was, "If we defeat this bill, it's bad for Obama, so we're going to defeat the bill no matter what." This brings to mind a more general question:
What is the basis for compromise with a group whose stated main policy priority is to cause you harm?
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| parent )Again, go back and see how it was done for Medicare Part D. The process was handled by grown-ups on both sides of the aisle.
As for the "Republican position," you're once again guilty of making invidious overgeneralizations. The GOP wanted a bill, just not that bill. That it made Obama and the Democratic "leadership" look bad, well, that was just gravy. But that said, I'm sure there are some GOPers who are against anything that Obama is for, not unlike a number of Democrats who were against anything that Bush was for.
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| parent )they did nothing when they had the majority for 6 years, and since Obama was sworn in they haven't supported any major initiative that he proposed. They negotiated and got changes they wanted inserted in the bill, and even then not a single Republican voted for it.
There's no factual support whatsoever for that statement.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Look, I've supported my statement with quotations and other events which were similar. I don't believe that the GOP wanted a bill. I don't find it a credible statement. I don't really understand why you do.
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| parent )News to me. Where was this vaunted GOP bill? Where were the serious Republican proposals? I remember people chortling about Obama's Waterloo. I do not remember any serious policy proposals.
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| parent )I dunno, man. I think that trick's been used.
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| parent ).
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )of blobs morphing shape and shifting position.
Make it happen, O'Reilly media.
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