Ace of Spades posted some alarming news. Nancy Pelosi says that the Democrats are going to use the Slaughter Rule to pass the Senate ObamaCare bill and the vote is set for next week.
In case you're unfamiliar, the Slaughter Rule is named after Louise "she wore her dead sister's dentures" Slaughter and it works like this: The speaker brings a bill containing a list of changes that the House wants to make to the Senate bill to the floor for a vote. When the House members vote for and pass this list of changes to the Senate bill, the House will deem the Senate bill as passed as well, even though the Senate bill itself was never voted on to begin with.
Apparently Pelosi feels comfortable enough calling for the vote next week because she's been pretty successful peeling away enough of Stupak's bloc.
Nice, huh? The American people hate this bill so much that this is the only way Nancy Pelosi can get the bill out of the House and onto the president's desk. And if the House can get the wildly unpopular ObamaCare passed in this way, what's to stop them from doing this with every other bill that is unpopular with the American people?
I guess there are a lot of Democratic members of the House up for reelection in November who feel ready to retire.
Update: Robert Costa at The Corner has a long post about Bart Stupak and how his pro-life bloc of Democrats are going wobbly on the issue of life. It's a compelling view of the cynicism and nastiness of Washington, particularly from the Democrats who Stupak says want to fund abortions so they can better control and reduce the number of people who will need government funded health care. (Those who are inclined to get their panties in a bunch need to know this: there is a history of using abortion for controlling populations. Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger for the express purpose of limiting certain groups of people that she felt were a drain on society and, therefore, unworthy of life.) Here's a portion of Costa's post:
Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. "I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance," he says. "Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered." The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, "are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party."
What are Democratic leaders saying? "If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That's one of the arguments I've been hearing," Stupak says. "Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue -- come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we're talking about."
"Throughout this debate, even when the House leaders have acknowledged us, it's always been in a backhanded way," he laments. "I'm telling the others to hold firm, and we'll meet next week, but I'm disappointed in my colleagues who said they'd be with us and now they're not. It's almost like some right-to-life members don't want to be bothered. They just want this over."
And the politics of the issue are pretty rough. "This has really reached an unhealthy stage," Stupak says. "People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they're really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No."
So, this is what the Democratic party has been reduced to: threatening to file ethics complaints against a member in order to force him to vote in a way that violates his conscience and his constituents' wishes. This is your party leadership at work, Democrats. Proud?
When I read that Stupak said the pro-lifers in his bloc "just want this over," it triggered in my mind the image of a person so ravaged and worn down by disease that he can't go on even another day. The disease has overtaken his body to the point that he knows it has beaten him and death is imminent. Now he just wants it over.
It seems the leftists in the House have worn down the weaker members of Stupak's bloc in much the same way. For many of these Democrats, their political lives are on the line because they come from more conservative districts. The pressure that Pelosi and the other House Dems have placed on them caused them to fold and now they are succumbing to what will probably result in their political deaths.
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