Hewitt Blog

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.

 

 

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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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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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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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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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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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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Barack Obama officially unveiled his new Obamacare, Mini Me edition, at the White House today. It of course is not substantively different than the old Obamacare bill, since the President cited CBO scoring from the old bill to support quick passage of the new bill.

The one thing the President was animated about was the need for you to make your voice heard. We agree. Below is the list of Democratic Congressperson who could be in play this November if they get this vote wrong. Now is the time to get in the game. Make the calls. 

Please call first those Democrats from your state.  Call the switchboard at 2020-225-3121, but also call their district offices.

The message should be simple: Vote "no" on Obamacare.  Tell the staff or the voicemail that if the Member votes yes, you will contribute to their 2010 opponent and work in their district to defeat them.

There are two lists.  The so-called "Blue Dogs" who are supposed to be moderate are listed first.

The second list are those Democrats targeted by the ReverseTheVote.org effort by the National Republican Congressional Committee who are not listed among the Blue Dogs. (ReverseTheVote has targeted two dozen Democrats who voted yes for Obamacare in the fall but face difficult re-elections in eight short months. Contributions to ReverseTheVote.org are divided equally among these 24 campaigns.)

Again, start with those Members who are in your state, but then move to the entire list. Start with the Blue Dogs but please also call the Pelosi supporters on the ReverseTheVote.org list who need to understand this vote could decide their fate in November.  When possible, use the name of their likely opponent in your communication to convey that you are indeed informed and ready to work against them on behalf of their opponent.

The Blue Dogs:


Alabama

Rep. Bobby Bright – 2^nd District

DC Phone: (202) 225-2901

District Phone: Dothan (334) 794-9680; Montgomery (334) 277-9113; Opp (334) 493-9253

Link to E-mail: https://forms.house.gov/bright/contact-form.shtml

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Just as pro-life Democrats in the House are coming under enormous pressure to vote for the Senate version of Obamacare which includes public funding for abortion, Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput delivers an important speech on John F. Kennedy's famous Houston speech of 50 years ago.

Thanks to Fr. Z. for the pointer.

The entire text is here.

Key excerpts:

Fifty years after Kennedy’s Houston speech, we have more Catholics in national public office than ever before.  But I wonder if we’ve ever had fewer of them who can coherently explain how their faith informs their work, or who even feel obligated to try.  The life of our country is no more “Catholic” or “Christian” than it was 100 years ago.  In fact it's arguably less so.  And at least one of the reasons for it is this:  Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience.  Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy – the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance.  And too many just don't really believe.  Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles.  But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, “I doubt it.”...

Now before ending, I want to turn briefly to the third point I mentioned earlier in my talk:  the realities we face today, and what Christians need to do about them.  As I was preparing these comments for tonight, I listed all the urgent issues that demand our attention as believers: abortion; immigration; our obligations to the poor, the elderly and the disabled; questions of war and peace; our national confusion about sexual identity and human nature, and the attacks on marriage and family life that flow from this confusion; the growing disconnection of our science and technology from real moral reflection; the erosion of freedom of conscience in our national health-care debates; the content and quality of the schools that form our children. 

The list is long.  I believe abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime.  We need to do everything we can to support women in their pregnancies and to end the legal killing of unborn children.  We may want to remember that the Romans had a visceral hatred for Carthage not because Carthage was a commercial rival, or because its people had a different language and customs.  The Romans hated Carthage above all because its people sacrificed their infants to Ba’al.  For the Romans, who themselves were a hard people, that was a unique kind of wickedness and barbarism.  As a nation, we might profitably ask ourselves whom and what we’ve really been worshipping in our 40 million “legal” abortions since 1973.

Send the remarks to every Catholic in Congress as the crucial votes on Obamacare approach, and of course, read the whole thing.  I guess the Archbishop intended it for everyone to read and not just legislators.