considering the state of American
GOP/E$tabli$hment Ldrs....WHIMPS!
Posted on 04/12/2013 2:25:52 AM PDT by markomalley
In an almost-impossible-to-believe collapse of principle and political smarts, the House GOP appears committed to stalling out the bipartisan effort to repeal the onerous, job-destroying medical device tax.
In an interview with me on Thursday, House GOP Deputy Whip Peter Roskam attempted to explain why the House Republicans would not be moving a stand-alone repeal bill, even though the Senate’s test vote on repeal passed by a 79-20 margin the week before the Easter recess began.
The transcript of my interview with Roskam is here.
A week ago Roll Call’s David Drucker had reported that House Ways and Means Committee Chair David Camp was opposed to moving the repeal bill through the committee and to the floor quickly, but a series of interviews with other Ways and Means Committee members as well as Mitch McConnell’s appeal to the House to pass a stand-alone repeal bill appeared to set the stage for quick House action on the measure. Why, after all, would the GOP endanger its signature issue of tax reduction, especially when the Senate was poised to agree? That is the politics of self-destruction, and it was simply impossible to believe that even the so-called “stupid party” could be so dumb.
Well, it now appears to be, and the reasons Roskam advanced for not moving repeal are not only not persuasive but in fact verge on the incoherent. The very savvy Roskam was trying to argue that the House couldn’t pass repeal because Harry Reid might hijack the repeal bill and send a different bill to the House-Senate conference. This is utter nonsense, of course, because Senate Republicans could block such a measure, and even if they didn’t the House would be under no obligation to approve the disfigured repeal. The Camp-Roskam argument appears to be, then, that the House GOP cannot pass a simple bill for fear of getting tricked later, but that it can be trusted to pass a complicated tax overhaul sometime in the future but not get tricked in the course of that House-Senate conference.
Right.
There are explanations for this bizarre decision to snatch defeat from the the jaws of victory, but what is truly amazing is that Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor and all the other House GOP members are willing to let Chairman Camp endanger their majority because he doesn’t want to proceed now with a narrow medical device tax repeal that is manifestly great and urgently needed policy and good politics.
If the leadership does not overrule Chairman Camp and oblige a clean repeal bill –which is already supported by a majority of the House– to issue from the Committee, every single House Republican will suffer damage to their credibility, re-election chances, and of course their own self-respect. Real jobs are being lost by real people, genuine hardships are happening and the nation is losing a crucial edge in a crucial industry, but the House GOP is fiddling and spouting absolute nonsense.
The idea of volunteering time to, much less contributing to a party this lost in Beltway absurdity is ludicrous. How can any House GOPer expect anyone to take them seriously when they refuse to do the most obvious things?
I've come to the conclusion they're all playing for the same team. The only differing factor is what position they play.
Can anyone explain why the Repubs caved on the gun-grab filibuster? Anyone?
Always looking for hope to triumph over experience...
I think they wanted to have their arguments heard on the floor of the Senate and then look to the House to defeat it.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
I have a hunch that they want the democrats to choke on what they have done until they are ready to get rid of a whole lot, if not all of the mess.
My thoughts exactly!
The second IS the Constitution. Once it’s gone, the rest is too.
Having spent time at Roskams town halls and having the opportunity to speak with him, all I can politely say is that he is a vapid politician, through and through. I doubt the man has had an original thought the entire time he’s been in DC.
Slick, polished, empty eyes....
The Witless Wonder and Stuart Smalley both voted for the implementation of the medical device tax through DeathCare. When the predictable blowback hit them, they shape-shifted.
Don't let them off the hook that easily. They're just tax-and-spend lefties who got caught.
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