Thursday, March 11, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:39 AM
When and if a House vote is taken on the Senate version of Obamacare, all Democrats will have sorted themselves into one of four boxes --Y/Y, N/N, Y/N and N/Y.
A Y/Y Dem will have voted for Obamacare in the fall and also for the Senate bill. This makes them big government liberals or worse, but at least consistent.
The N/N Dems will have a record of at least voting against the destruction of American health care, and this will make them the most-difficult-to-defeat targets in the fall elections.
A Y/N Democrat has a chance to make an argument to their constituents that they listened and acted in response to what the clear will of people was indicating. Others in this group may cite their unwillingness to trust the so-call "sidecar fix" process or their inability to vote for public funding of abortion. Their support for Obamacare in the fall will take some explaining, but at least they will have a story to tell.
The N/Y Democrats will be wearing the biggest targets in November, for they will have no story to tell except that they cravenly tried to hide from the voters in the fall by voting "no," but when summoned by San Fran Nan they buckled under and provided the vote she needed. Thus they will be revealed as both cowardly and deceitful, as well as not particularly smart.
Pelosi will try and minimize the number of Democrats on this list, and will probably not even take a vote if she cannot get to 216, but whoever crosses over from a "no vote" in the fall to a yes vote on the Senate bill will attract enormous waves of opposition energy and money beginning almost the day after any vote on the Senate bill.
Jay Cost, whose "Horserace Blog" is following the head count closely, identifies a half-dozen Democrats who he puts in the "persuadable" category, meaning the six Dems who are mostly likely to go over from opposition to Obamacare in the fall to support of the Senate bill now and thus into the "N/Y" category:
1. John Adler (NJ-3)
2. Brian Baird (WA-3)
3. John Boccieri (OH-16)
4. Bart Gordon (TN-6)
5. Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24)
6. Scott Murphy (NY-20)
By contrast, Cost has identified 16 Democrats who are potential Y/Ns and who have publicly indicated some concern over the Senate bill:
1. Michael Arcuri (NY-24)
2. Marion Berry (AR-1)
3. Shelley Berkley (NV-1)
4. Dennis Cardoza (CA-18)
5. Henry Cuellar (TX-27)
6. Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3)
7. Joe Donnelly (IN-2)
8. Raul Grijalva (AZ-7)
9. Baron Hill (IN-9)
10. Steve Kagen (WI-9)
11. Dan Lipinski (IL-3)
12. Dan Maffei (NY-25)
13. James Oberstar (MN-8)
14. Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL)
15. Kurt Schrader (OR-5)
16. Bart Stupak (MI-1)
17. Dina Titus (NV-3)
Use the House switchboard at 202-224-3121 and call all 23 Democrats listed above with the same message: Any vote for the Senate bill means strong opposition from you and support for their opponents.
And tell the potential N/Y Democrats that they are the most endangered incumbents of them all.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:17 PM
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:20 AM
Zach Space is one of those Democratic Congressmen being asked by Nancy Pelosi to vote for the Senate version of Obamacare.
If he does, the headline of this post will be the narrative of the ad that runs against him from the summer through November 2 as he faces the voters of his district --Ohio's 18th CD.
Imagine a deep voiced narrator telling the audience over and over again the truth --Zach Space voted for the version of Obamacare that contained the special deals for Nebraska, for Louisiana, for Florida's Medicare Advantage subscribers but not those in Space's constituencies in Zanesville, Chillicothe or Dover.
The same ad will run in every other district of every other Democratic Congressman who signs on to Pelosi's political suicide mission of voting for the Senate version with the prayer of fixing it later. "Don't worry," she and President Obama are telling imperiled incumbents, "you will be able to explain to them that your vote was cast knowing that all those special deals would be canceled."
Yeah. That'll work.
One of the reasons it will be tough going for Democrats to round up the votes to push the Senate bill through the House is that a vote is a vote, and complicated explanations of why Congressmen voted for bills they didn't really believe in are rarely heard much less believed. We all remember how John Kerry's famous "I actually voted for the bill before I voted against it" explanation worked out.
I have been urging my audience to contact Congressman Space to urge he stand up and say no now --right now. His contact info:
Rep. Zack Space – Ohio's 18th District
DC Phone: (202) 225-6265
District Phone: Dover (330) 364-4300; Zanesville (740) 452-6338; Chillicothe (740) 779-1636
Link to E-mail
Follow those contacts up with the same sort of effort directed at another Ohio Democrat, Charles Wilson:
Rep. Charles Wilson – 6th District
DC Phone: (202) 225-5705
District Phone: Canfield (330) 533-7250; Marietta (740) 376-0868; Bridgeport (740) 633-5705; Ironton (740) 533-9423; Wellsville (330) 532-3740
Link to E-mail
In fact, just grab the contact info offered here for all the Blue Dog Democrats and Swing District Democrats and start calling. Tell everyone on their staffs that a vote for the Senate bill is a vote for publicly-funded abortion, for massive cuts to Medicare, and for the special interest giveaways, and that you will help fund their opponents' ads that tell voters that truth.
In the days ahead I will focus on a handful of key Democrats, including Space and Wilson and Nevada's Dina Titus:
Rep. Dina Titus
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-3252
District Office:
Las Vegas: (702) 387-4941
E-mail link
Every call matters. Tell them you will work against them. Tell them what the ads will say.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 12:48 AM
Hotline's Reid Wilson has a very good list of House Democrats who will decide the fate of Obamacare.
This is a period of three weeks in which every bit of effort must be made to contact and persuade these Democrats of the need to vote no on the package.
The House switchboard is 202-225-3121.
And this list of both Blue Dogs and Democrats from swing districts can be printed off and used as well. It includes the numbers of many district offices.
If any blogger out there looking for traffic matches the Hotline list with district office contact info, please send me the link and I will post.
Looking for a Democratic Member on whom to practice your telephone technique? Try Ohio's Zach Space. Young and in a swing district, Space knows Ohio is tough terrain for Democrats in 2010. If he is hit with a wall of calls urging him to oppose Obamacare, he will have to think long and hard about declaring his opposition early and in a visible, news-making way. Unlike Rahm and the Speaker, Space's D.C. career has just begun and he's far from being experienced enough to make a living as a former Congressman. The party's leaders may demand a yes vote from Space and those similarly situated, but how are they going to help him pay the bills in the decades ahead?
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Monday, March 08, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:31 AM
My new Washington Examiner column looks at the rush to pass a massive bill that no one has actually even seen.Frank Luntz fills in for me today as I argue a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and then head to Cleveland for tomorrow's dinner with Archbishop Charles Chaput before the
Cleveland Right to Life conference. I will be broadcasting from the conference.
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Monday, March 08, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:29 AM
Jay Cost at Horserace Blog is doing a very good job, and the MSM should take note of what reporting looks it.
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Monday, March 08, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:26 AM
The Monday morning column from Clark Judge:
Amateur Hour in our “Ungovernable” Government
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc. (www.whwg.com <http://www.whwg.com> ) and chair, Pacific Research Institute (www.pacificresearch.org <http://www.pacificresearch.org> ).
A great deal of talk has come out of Washington these last few weeks about the nation being “ungovernable.” What that means, of course, is that the White House can’t find sixty votes for health care overhaul in a senate that their party controls by sixty votes. So they are pushing the legislation through using budget reconciliation, lest, of course, the nation prove “ungovernable.”
As everyone knows by now, the Congress’ arcane reconciliation process was intended to cover strictly fiscal legislation -- taxes, spending -- not the creation of entirely new programs of massive sweep. But never mind. Unless we find a way to bend Congress to the President’s will, the nation is “ungovernable.”
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 10:11 AM
Many thanks to Guy Benson and Mary Katharine Ham for filling in for me this past week, and to Duane and Adam for keeping the duo from going off the rails. My e-mails tell me that both Ham and Benson have long and distinguished careers ahead of them. Frank Luntz guests hosts for me on Monday and I return with a special broadcast from Cleveland on Tuesday following an argument in federal court in California.
My
new Townhall.com column, "Counting Heads," chides the MSM for not doing its key job in the Obamacare debate, which is reporting accurately which House members are for it, which are against it, and which are still on the fence. If you find any sites that are maintaining an accurate head count on the looming House vote on Obamacare, please send along a link to hugh@hughhewitt.com.
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Friday, March 05, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:30 AM
Over at NationalReview.com,
Yuval Levin reiterates the key point about Obamacare: It will succeed or fail in the House.
Which is why you need to spend some time every day calling or contacting these Blue Dog Democrats and the Democrats from swing districts who vote yes on Obamacare last fall.
All of their contact information is in this column.
Only after you have made a few calls should you
enjoy the conversation from last night's show between guest hosts Guy Benson and Mary Katharine Ham and columnist-to-the-world Mark Steyn. (In this interview, Mark Steyn for the first time of which I am aware brands Nancy Pelosi a "spectacular figure.")
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:20 AM
The
announcement by Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak that he and a dozen others Democrats would not vote for the Senate bill because it provides for taxpayer-funding of abortion greatly complicates Nancy Pelosi's task.
What MSM has not done, however, is to report on who these dozen members are, or how the count stands generally. This is part of the year-long cheerleading effort by the Manhattan-Beltway media elite of the Obamacare agenda --never providing focus for the public on who might be on the fence. Such focus would greatly increase the public pressure on those members, thus increasing the difficulty the president and the Speaker face in getting Obamacare passed. Senators facing the tradition-destroying reconciliation votes would also hesitate to throw in with the White House if they knew that the Senate bill wasn't going to pass the House anyway.
Which means everyone is very interested in in knowing where the vote count stands, and yet there is zero reporting of "yeas," "nays," and undecideds. The most important vote on domestic policy in decades and the MSM's scores of alleged reporters in D.C. cannot come up with a House scorecard?
This is a repeat of the Edwards fiasco --a complete unwillingness of the so-called "journalistic elite" to dig out the facts even though there is immense interest in the facts. It is much easier to report the Speaker's spin or the president's 100th "last ditch effort" than it is to call 435 offices or seek out the key few dozen members who hold the fate of Obamacare in their hands.
It is MSM's job, but Obamacare fans hope they continue not to do it.
The lists of Blue Dog Democrats and of pro-Obamacare Democrats from swing districts are in the post below. You can make your own inquiries while urging them all to vote no and to declare their intention to do so publicly.
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