Hewitt Blog

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.

 

Given that the proposed use of reconciliation is an illegitimate use of the procedure, the Senate GOP ought to be preparing to counter the jam down with a flood of amendments, each one of which requires an up or down vote.  The prospect of thousand, or tens of thousands, or perhaps even a million amendments and the resulting spectacle of a Senate paralyzed by endless roll call counts should worry Democrats much more than Republicans as the American public doesn't want Obamacare, and a last ditch stand to stop it via a blizzard of amendments will put the spotlight on the bill and its many flaws.  It will also show a Republican leadership willing to fight to stop this radical rewrite of the rules of American medicine,

But where to get thousands and thousands of draft amendments?  This is the joy of the internet.  If the NRSC is on its toes, it will already be setting up a site where visitors can draft and submit their own amendments for use in the process. (The NRSC website is already accepting input on the topic.) Some of the draft amendments will be inspired and informed as experts weigh in. Some will be absurd.  Some no doubt will be vulgar or obscene as trolls invade. 

But the vast bulk of them would come from ordinary Americans with ideas on how to reform health care.  The NRSC staff can suggest drafting guidelines consistent with the Senate's rules, but then turn the input switch on and let voters have their part in the amendment process.  What's a hundred thousand up-or-down votes between friends? Speaker Pelosi demanded "a simple majority vote" after all, so she should get an avalanche of simple majority votes.

While individual senators of course must offer every specific amendment, they would do well to attribute any particular draft to its original author.  Thus would Tea Party activists, state legislators, candidates for Congress, high school civics classes, and each one of my law students have a chance to impact the legislative process.  (I might assign the drafting of two amendments each to my Con Law students --a memorable participation in an exercise in saving separation of powers and the traditional role of the Senate.)

With technology and the ability to employ new media to spread the word, the Senate GOP can summon up as many amendments as it needs to block reconciliation.  A radical solution?  Not as radical as ignoring the vote in Massachusetts, bypassing the established conference committee process, and abusing the obscure reconciliation to jam down a massive and unpopular rewrite of every rule of American healthcare.

Stopping Obamacare is a priority among a large majority of Americans.  Senate Republicans would be well advised to let that vast group of concerned citizens help them make the stand against the president and his radical agenda.

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Guy Benson sits in for me on the radio this week.  Hopefully he will keep the audience up to date on the dispatch of Team Rubicon to Chile.  Guy is from Chicago, as is most of the original Team Rubicon team members.

If you want to help the victims of the earthquake in Chile, support Team Rubicon. 

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My Washington Examiner column notes the radical nature of the push to use the reconciliation process to pass Obamacare.

My Townhall.com column provides all the contact info for House Blue Dogs and pro-Obamacare Democrats from swing districts.  Spend some time calling as many as you can.

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The Monday morning column from Clark Judge:

Republicans, Conservative Democrats, the Health Care Summit, and American Exceptionalism
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group (www.whwg.com <http://www.whwg.com> ) and chairman, Pacific Research Institute (www.pacificresearch.org <http://www.pacificresearch.org> ).
 
“Blue Dogs want health care to come up again,” said a long-time veteran of the House in a closed door briefing last Monday.   “So they can vote against it.”  
 
Many conservative Democratic members of Congress cast their ballots for the bill last time – and those who did not are widely seen as part of a Speaker Nancy Pelosi con game that gave vulnerable members a pass.  Either way, all want a chance to show that they are against the bill – really and truly against it.  No con no way.

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Hard to imagine that Chile won't need teams of first responders.  Keep an eye on Team Rubicon's website.  If any of them deploy, it will be a great place to direct financial aid with an assurance of its effective and immediate use.



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