Redstate

Posted at 9:40pm on Mar. 6, 2008 Sen. Ron Wyden leads bi(tri?)partisan group of 5 Ds, 6 Rs, 1 I in fighting for same old government-controlled health care

Take a bow, Sens. Alexander, Grassley, Crapo, Bennett, Coleman, Gregg, Wyden, Carper, Landrieu, B. Nelson, Stabenow, and Lieberman

By Jeff Emanuel

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the primary sponsor of bipartisan Senate Bill 334 (the “Healthy Americans Act”), has spent the last few days on the stumping for his plan to “fix” America’s health care system.

Burdened with the mouthful of a title "A bill to provide affordable, guaranteed private health coverage that will make Americans healthier and can never be taken away,” S. 334 includes an ‘individual mandate,’ or legal requirement that every individual purchase at least a minimum amount of coverage, though enforcement is left up to the States, which are directed to come up with a means of ensuring that the uninsured are penalized.

Interestingly, Sen. Wyden uses this ‘individual mandate’ portion of the bill to present an olive branch (or a level of government-backed legitimacy) to practitioners and recipients of holistic and spiritual medicine, as S. 334 officially excuses people who are “opposed to health plan coverage for religious reasons, including an individual who declines health plan coverage due to a reliance on healing using spiritual means through prayer alone” from compliance with the mandate.

Individual states are also allowed to determine whether complying with this mandate would constitute a “hardship” for impoverished families and individuals, and to make allowance for them.

Read on.

Posted in bipartisanship | Government-run health care | Health care | Nanny-Statism | Policy | RINOs — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:19pm on Feb. 17, 2008 Democrat Reps. Shays, Langevin come up with a *brand new* idea -- and it's as brilliant as it ever was

By Jeff Emanuel

Reps. Chris "Has Rafael Palmieri gotten his 300th hit yet?" Shays (Rumored to be "R"-CT) and Jim "I'm such a nobody that not even I've heard of me before" Langevin (D-RI) announced their new plan to solve America's health care problems last week. They're billing their new legislation, called the "American Health Benefits Program," as "the first bipartisan universal health care plan to originate in the U.S. House of Representatives."

Claiming that their plan (which won't be available to the public until later today or tomorrow at earliest) will "cure the health care system," Shays and Langevin want to play up "managed competition" and "shared responsibility" -- awesome, brand new ideas that mean "government control of the market" and "doctors need to take less and do more while taxpayers pay more for their countrymen's health care" -- to make health care "efficient and affordable."

Oh, and they would create yet another government bureaucracy, the Health Benefits Administration, to oversee this program, and to implement and enforce provider rate controls. But hey, don't let a couple simple little things like those turn you off; there's so much more to love about this plan!

Read on.

Posted in Economics | Government-run health care | Health care | Policy | RINOs — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:16pm on Jan. 25, 2008 I am no longer a RiNO

By Neil Stevens

For the record, I no longer consider myself a RiNO. I will vote for the nominees of the Republican party* all the way down the ticket automatically. That's my new policy.

This is a major change for me. I've always considered voting for another party to be a reasonable message-sending approach. but I was misguided: my thought processes hinged on the assumption that the Republican party is truly and rightfully Reaganite. But that is not the case, so I have to adapt.

Posted in conservatism | Conservatives | Republicans | RINOs | Ronald Reagan — Comments (152) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:00am on Jan. 19, 2008 Arnold Schwarzenegger apologizes for being a Republican

The Risk of a "Glamour Pick" for Office

By Jeff Emanuel

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R? Yes, but apologetically) sat down with the L.A. Times yesterday and apologized -- deeply and from the bottom of his heart -- for being a Republican, citing "political inexperience" as his excuse for having espoused semiconservative ideals and principles during his first campaign and in the early years of his Governorship.

The man who rode into the Governor's mansion four years ago on a wave of dissatisfaction with former Governor Gray Davis and the budget crisis he wrought was, by all accounts, sober in his reflection on the last few years in office, telling Times writers and editors "that he now regrets a number of the policies he championed in his early days in office and acknowledges his own rhetoric was at times overheated and naive."

Now, after enough time as a member of the Establishment, the man who once championed himself as the antidote to the woes brought on California by that Establishment is showing the effects of a hard-earned lesson in politics and governance -- that it's easier to go along and to get along than it is to stick to principle and to fight for change -- and has accordingly dropped almost all of the conservative, change-centered, state-saving rhetoric and stated principle that inspired Californians to twice elect him to the state's highest office.

Please do read on.

Posted in bipartisanship | California | girly man | Republicans | RINOs | Schwarzenegger | Spineless cowards | Trojan Horse — Comments (80)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:35am on Nov. 7, 2007 Re: Schwarzenegger (R) Showing Fiscal Responsibility

By Dan McLaughlin

Man bites dog.

Posted at 10:22pm on Nov. 6, 2007 I am a RiNO

By Neil Stevens

Hello, my name is Neil, and I am a Republican in Name Only.

No, it's true. Really. I fit the classic definition. My views are outside the party mainstream, so much so that I cannot in good conscience vote for the Republican every election, every time, regardless of who gets nominated1.

I'm not alone, either. Between people like me being RiNOs, and the great mass of voters who don't even register for a party, non-Republicans and RiNOs just might carry more right-leaning electoral weight than 'real' Republicans.

This has consequences for the party, and especially for Republicans voting in the primary with an eye on winning in the general election.

Read on...

Posted in Archived | primaries | Republicans | RINOs — Comments (155) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:04am on Oct. 25, 2007 Tom Davis Is Really Gone

By streiff

Virginia's Tom Davis, after hinting at it last week, has virtually made it official. He will not run for the senate seat of the retiring John Warner. His reason, according to the Washington Post, is that he doesn't like the Republican party so much.

Yawn.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | dipsticks | republican main street partnership | RINOs | tom davis — Comments (13)/ Email this page » / Read More »