House Not Close.
Spoke Steve Dennis and David Drucker of Roll Call Monday re the Obamacare posting on the White House website and learned that the Democrats do not have the votes in either the Senate or the House for what is planned -- reconciliation in the Senate (51 votes) followed by majority approval (218 votes) in the House. Dennis said the House caucus came out of the meeting with shaking-heads and grim faces. No one has a count. No one has whipped the caucus. The cross-currents are ferocious and uncharted. We tallied the lost votes since the 220 last fall. The Republican vote from Louisiana has nixed the plan. 219. Four Democrats have retired, flipped or perished (Murtha). 215. Five more more have gone because of their re-election problems. As many as ten of the 39 Democrats who voted against it are needed to vote for what they found unacceptable months ago. The best hope is that the members who have retired or abandoned their re-elections will vote for Mrs. Pelosi's scheme if they are adequately compensated. Leased, not purchased.
Train Wreck.
Spoke to GOP source late in the evening off air and learned that the Republican caucus was also in turmoil late in the evening. This upset was because of the dominant opinion of the group that it should not participate in the President's bipartisan summit on Thursday 25. The leadership of John Boehner and Eric Cantor insist upon attending the TV show. Bohener has a list of what House members he is inviting along, but he wouldn't share it this evening with his own caucus. Alleyways of paranoia in the halls of Congress. The GOP members were decidedly opposed to attending a sham. The result was that the GOP knows it is a train wreck coming down the tracks and yet still will not step aside.
Note that Republicans have been rendered borderline giddy by what recent polls are showing. They’re clearly expecting a huge payday next November and beyond. I would caution that there are still many pitfalls that lie ahead. For one thing, people are not overly enthused with Republicans either. They see Republicans as being something on the order of unindicted co-conspirators. There may yet be a huge push for a third party (which would split the Republican vote and give Democrats a victory). Democrats themselves are divided, though none of them can be expected to vote Republican.
The Obama election set the template: “Anybody but Bush and (to some extent) Republicans.” Republicans themselves buckled, disavowing their own support and principles, reaching across the aisle to embrace questionable Democrat proposals. All this has left a bad taste in voters’ mouths. Taste is the sensation that lingers the longest in memory. It is a factor that cannot be overlooked.
Even more disturbing is the possibility that once the new congress is seated, it will find itself marginalized and unable to stop anything that the executive branch puts forth. Once the people catch on, they will begin to question the efficacy of representative governance. “Democracy” will become a shunned concept, similar to what “capitalism” has become.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Has there ever been a more biased, anal orifice, media flack than Chris Matthews? I mean, since Dan Rather was fired from CBS?
Matthews hasn't been worth listening to since Zell Miller made hash of him in the 2004 Republican convention coverage. Once Matthews started thinking about a run for Congress, the mask of savvy insider analysis fell away exposing the party hack he always was at heart.
Matthews is worse than Rather and that is saying a lot. I don't think Matthews really even pretends any more.
In fact I think it better that they not pretend. Just announce what side of the spectrum they are on and go from there. In that sense I don't have any problem with his show (not that I watch it much) as it is not really a news show, it's an opinion show. Of course Matthew's opinion is, dare I say it, retarded.
He reached his level of competence as a print journalist, but his wife (who was a REAL news anchor) was probably making ten times his salary, so he just HAD to get on the air. The two of them have made enough money to retire dozens of times over. Hopefully his low ratings will cause him to think about that sooner rather than later.
I would say Keith Olbermann makes Matthews look like Walter Cronkite.