Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick Lee
And I'm pretty sure Obama, Pelosi and Reid will have studied exactly which mistakes Clinton made in his first two years to avoid making them again this time around.
Phil Gramm's filibuster is what killed Hillary's health plan. The Dems not only won't have to worry about getting Republicans votes for it this time, they won't even have to worry about a filibuster. Clinton's '93 tax hike passed by two votes in the House and Al Gore had to break the tie in the Senate. That won't be necessary this time around either. Clinton blamed the whole thing on the NRA, which gladly took credit for the shift in Congress. But we all know they didn't make it happen. The perfect storm of Clinton overreaching with thin majorities in Congress and Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour running the opposition is what happened here. It ain't gonna happen again.
|
I'm not as pessimistic as all that Rick. There is an anti-incumbent wind blowing right about now. People are looking to clean house. Also, I think the GOP has found an issue that they can rally behind - drilling! With a side order of abortion!
Plus if Obama keeps opening his pie-hole without his treasured teleprompter, there will be many more gaffes in the next 90 days. W/o his script, he makes W sound like Winston freaking Churchill!
And Bam Bam's VP pick of Joe Biden looks more like desperation than vote gathering. He really needed a woman on the ticket - like Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius. The bitter old feminists would have been happy (or at least less bitter as they can never be truly happy). And may have been enticed back into the fold.
But as always, the Clintons would have made Bam Bam's life miserable if he picked a woman over Hank.
About the Clinton take-over of health care - Phil Gramm may have killed it in the senate, but the Democrats themselves killed it in the house. I'll never forget this. The GOP were in the minority at the time, and had 10 members in the house Ways and Means committee to the dems 11. The GOP submitted Hillary's health care plan - all 600 pages of it - "as is" for a vote to release it to the floor. All 10 Republicans voted no, all 11 dems voted "present"!! How "Obama" of them. So the "let's-socialize-medicine-and-punish-doctors" plan never made it out of committee.
Of course, that was back when the GOP actually had a set of stones.