GOP Leadership in Congress Can't Keep Ignoring Conservative Frustration
As they sing in Chicago, "He had it comin'." In a move unprecedented in the history of the House of Representatives, a Republican lawmaker filed a motion Tuesday to remove House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, from his post, in another sign of dissatisfaction with Boehner's leadership by a number of House conservatives. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., filed the resolution -- a "motion to vacate the chair" -- late Tuesday, claiming that he "has endeavored to consolidate power and centralize decision-making, bypassing the majority of the 435 Members of Congress and the people they represent. Sure, a leadership fight may not strengthen the hands of conservatives right now. But the base is deeply disappointed in this era of a Republican-controlled Congress so far. The major accomplishment is . . . a trade bill? What happened to all of that talk about forcing President Obama to veto popular legislation on a regular basis? Why did they go along with the Corker agreement, requiring only 34 votes to sustain the Iran deal? Why all the hesitation to have a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood? Why is Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell backing a reauthorization of the Export-Import bank? Are we really supposed to be excited about a long-term highway funding bill? There's the old saying, "If you aim at the king, you had better not miss." And that's true -- but if you aim at the king and miss, the king learns that some people out there are mad enough to take shots at him -- and maybe he takes steps to address that. As John Fund pointed out on the cruise, you can't beat somebody with nobody. Frustrated conservatives need a lawmaker to stand as an alternative speaker. So who's it going to be? Perhaps the Most Intriguing Fight of the Coming Debate: Trump vs. Walker What do Trump's self-identified conservative fans think of this? The confrontation between Trump and Walker first started brewing over the weekend, when Trump, in a speech in Iowa, said Wisconsin had recorded budget deficits and high borrowing on the current governor's watch. "The hospitals and education is a disaster," Trump said. On Monday, Trump took to Twitter to further criticize Walker, saying that people would not vote for him once they learned how much a "mess" the state is in. Walker's response: "He's using the talking points of the Democrats last year," the two-term governor said during a happy hour stop Monday in Chicago. "The public in my state reelected me for the third time in four years because they realized those talking points were not the facts." "I don't know where he's getting his facts from, other than the talking points of the state Democrats, but we've proven them time and time again to be wrong in elections," Walker told reporters during a stop at the famed Billy Goat Tavern. Does it help the cause of conservatism to have the GOP frontrunner hitting a conservative governor of a purple state for making too deep cuts to education and state spending on health care? I'm thinking of a Rod Dreher piece on Bobby Jindal from February: Jindal has done a number on health care for the poor too. He has largely privatized the state's public hospitals, and refused as a matter of principle to take the federal Medicaid money due the state because of Obamacare. So now he can tell GOP primary voters nationwide that he stood up to Obamacare. Here's a slice of life story about what that meant to my family recently. One Saturday night in early December, my elderly father got really sick. My mom and I decided he had to get to the hospital (good thing we did, too; though he objected at first, he later said that if we hadn't taken him, he might not have lasted the night). We called his primary care physician, who recommended taking him to the emergency room at the midtown campus of the Baton Rouge General. You want to avoid Our Lady of the Lake, a big hospital in south Baton Rouge, on a weekend, said the doc; since the state closed the charity hospital in Baton Rouge a couple of years ago, shifting all the charity care to the Lake, the ER is chaos on a Saturday night. So we went to the ER at the midcity campus of the General, and got great care. Coming into the city from the north side, it was significantly closer to go to the General, too. Well, guess what? The General's midcity ER is closing, it was announced this week. The hospital was losing $2 million each month treating the indigent, and could no longer sustain that kind of hemorrhaging. This was foreseen back in 2010, when Jindal and the GOP legislature chose to close Baton Rouge's charity hospital . . . A cynic would conclude that grassroots conservatives say they want budget-cutters . . . until they actually see the budget cut. It's a cruel bait-and-switch from self-professed conservatives: Claim you want bold choices, political bravery, and a willingness to make the tough choices… and then denounce the guy who makes them as soon as something you like gets cut. As I wrote in The Weed Agency, budget hawks are fighting for an abstract concept, a "balanced budget" or "fiscal common sense"; defenders of government spending are fighting to save and expand something quite tangible to them. 
Democratic Firm to Media: Don't Show Those Planned Parenthood Videos See, when a PR flack calls you up or e-mails you to say, "Do not show this video," and there's no libel suit attached, you're supposed to say, "To hell with you," and show the video. But now we know better. Democratic PR firms think they can tell news networks what they should and shouldn't air. SKDKnickerbocker is no newbie to working on Planned Parenthood issues. The Democratically aligned firm is run by well-connected operatives, including Anita Dunn and Hilary Rosen. It also worked with the group during the 2012 election cycle, according to SKDKnickerbocker's website. "Planned Parenthood is a longtime client, and we are proud to help them push back against these extremist attacks from people who want to end reproductive health care for women in this country," a SKDKnickerbocker spokesman said in a statement. The group circulated a memo to reporters and producers late Monday that discouraged them from airing the undercover videos, arguing that they were obtained under false identification and violated patient privacy. "Those patients' privacy should not be further violated by having this footage shared by the media," the memo reads. Which patient's privacy is being violated by the video? The latest tape also includes footage of a physician in a laboratory talking with an actor posing as a purchaser of tissue samples. "I think the per-item [pricing] works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it," she said. The group that made the videos, which calls itself the Center for Medical Progress, identified the physician as Dr. Savita Ginde, who is vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Denver. The video, the third released by the Center for Medical Progress, includes an interview with a woman who says she used to work at Stem Express, in a Planned Parenthood clinic. "I thought I was going to be just drawing blood, not procuring tissue from aborted fetuses," Holly O'Donnell, the former procurement technician, said in the video. See, a statement like Ginde's more or less exposes the pledges of Planned Parenthood's president as being a bunch of bull. It's news. ADDENDA: There may be a happy hour for the pop-culture podcast on Friday in Old Town Alexandria. Stay tuned for details. | 
Comments
Post a Comment