(From the mailbox - quite a great read, MM)
A key DNC/“mainstream media” talking point is that House Republicans need to “get over” Obamacare because (1) Congress passed Obamacare; (2) the Supreme Court upheld it (actually, although the Court 5-4 upheld the individual mandate as a “tax,” the Court also held that the Tenth Amendment prohibits the federal government from enforcing the unfunded exchange mandate on the States); (3) Obama was reelected; and (4) it is “the law of the land.”
However, they seem to ignore:
Unlike Obamacare—which was rammed through Congress via reconciliation on a straight party-line vote on Christmas Eve—the Iraq War Resolution was passed by a bi-partisan vote in Congress, which included “Yes” votes from, e.g., Senators John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Rockefeller, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Carol Feinstein, Birch Bayh, Chuck Schumer, Max Baucus, and Harry Reid,
And, despite John Kerry’s vigorous Presidential campaign against the war, George Bush was reelected in 2004.
Yet, that never seemed to stop the Democrats—including those who voted for the Resolution—from repeatedly trying to “defund” the Iraq War and oppose raises to the debt ceiling. Indeed, Harry Reid—who now attacks those who oppose Obamacare with vicious rhetoric—calling them “anarchists” (or worse)—specifically introduced a bill to defund the war he voted to wage, while giving his infamous “the war is ‘lost’” speech.
Indeed, contrary to his recent rhetoric that Congress has never tried to hold policy hostage to the debt ceiling issue, then-(“I’m present”)-Senator Obama repeatedly attempted to do so in order to, among other things, oppose the war. In 2007, he introduced Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 in an attempt to block the “surge”—a policy he later, as President, adopted. He also decried the national debt under Bush—a “mere” 10 Trillion, compared to Obama’s 17 Trillion—as “unpatriotic” and voted against raising the debt ceiling.
And we all remember Hillary’s “I am sick and tired” “screech speech”: “I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration!’”
The fact is, the Founding Fathers, rightly so, gave the power of the purse to Congress and required that all spending bills be initiated in the House, precisely as a check and balance on a run-amuck Executive. No subsequent Congress is irrevocably bound by the actions of a predecessor one and is not bound to continue to fund government actions authorized by a previous Congress.
YESTERDAY’S “28% POLL”
Yesterday’s Gallup poll that only 28% of Americans now have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party is being misinterpreted—intentionally so by the Democrats, the Left, and the “main stream media,” and disappointingly and erroneously so by folks like Bret Hume, Bill O’Reilly, etc. The poll question was “Please say if you have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party.” Phrased in that manner, the 28% Favorable (72% unfavorable) does not mean “independents” and “moderates” are fleeing the Republican Party in droves because of the continuing resolution/debt ceiling/Obamacare fight. Rather, with the question phrased in that manner Gallup was bound to receive many “unfavorable” responses from conservative/Tea Party members who are disgusted with the Republican “establishment’s” internal campaign against Mike Lee, Tex Cruz, etc. See John McCain’s despicable interview this morning with Martha McCallum, on Fox, where, when asked by McCallum what McCain thought of the White House’s handling of the military death benefits, McCain’s response was, “Well, the White House handled it badly; but, they wouldn’t have had to handle it at all if Ted Cruz, et al, had not pursued the ridiculous strategy of trying to defund Obamacare and shutting down the government.” (I’m paraphrasing a bit—but that’s the gist of what he said.)
