Freedom Line Blog

While I don’t want any part of the mess surrounding the GOP run-off election for governor, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate is too intriguing to pass up.  Former Army and Air Force member Alvin Greene may be the most tragically comic major party nominee this election cycle.  Consider these opening paragraphs from a Washington Post profile:

Alvin M. Greene never gave a speech during his campaign to become this state’s Democratic nominee for Senate. He didn’t start a Web site or hire consultants or plant lawn signs. There’s only $114 in his campaign bank account, he says, and the only check he ever wrote from it was to cover his filing fee.

Indeed, in a three-hour interview, the unemployed military veteran could not name a single specific thing he’d done to campaign. Yet more than 100,000 South Carolinians voted for him on Tuesday, handing him nearly 60 percent of the vote and a resounding victory over Vic Rawl, a former judge who has served four terms in the state legislature.

Vic Rawl must be hating South Carolina voters today.  So too might Greene’s Republican opponent, conservative stalwart Senator Jim DeMint.  Imagine trying to run against a challenger with – to date – no position on anything other than, “We have to be pro-South Carolina.”

Things are getting awfully strange in the Palmetto State.  Thankfully, its other U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is about as non-controversial as an immigration friendly, climate change believing Southern Republican can be.

So far, President Barack Obama is 0-for-everything when it comes to getting directly involved in any campaign other than his own.  In a three month span, he helped lose Democratic campaigns for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, and the special election for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Now, it looks like he picked losers in two Democratic primaries.  Just when it seemed like the Joe Sestak pay-not-to-play offer couldn’t get weirder, the challenger in Colorado’s contested primary confirms that he too was approached about dropping out.  For those keeping score, Sestak beat Arlen Specter and Andrew Romanoff currently leads 60%-40% over the appointed incumbent Michael Bennet.  Whatever happened to the will of the people?

But what should we expect from a chief executive whose only “win” so far in office is a scandalously passed health care industry takeover that may go down as the most corrupt bargain ever brokered between a president and Congress.  The lesson here is that this president is as hapless at electoral horse trading as he is with legislative deal making.

How much longer ‘til 2012?

For those paying attention to the U.S. Senate race in California, it would be a forgivable sin of omission if one thought that all of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) campaign opponents sported an “R” after their name.  But apparently, she’s got competition in her Democratic primary next Tuesday: Slate contributor Mickey Kaus.

Surprisingly, Kaus is running to Boxer’s right on issues like firing bad public school teachers (supports), and amnesty for illegal immigrants (opposes).  And for those who would tar and feather Kaus as an ideological heretic, consider his response:

I’d argue these are the positions a liberal who cared about government and inequality would take. Why do Democrats reject them? They increasingly say it’s not so much because of policy, but because of politics: they have to turn out the “base” to win the next election, and the “base” consists of union members and Latinos (plus African Americans, who are badly hurt by illegal immigration but whom the party takes for granted).

Never mind that this theory is nearly unfalsifiable–if the Democrats lose, its proponents will always say that they just didn’t please the base enough. Has base-pleasing ever panned out? Looking back over recent elections, I can only think of one where the “base” was clearly more important than the moderate middle–that was the presidential election of 2004, when George W. Bush turned out millions of new right-wing voters many people thought didn’t exist. But most recent mid-term elections have been preceded by predictions that “Hey, given the low turnout it all depends on mobilizing the base!”–only to be followed by acknowledgments that it was moderate swing voters who swung the result.

If only Senator Boxer would debate this guy…

H/T: Huffington Post

Florida’s most infamous party-switcher is realizing the pain of political divorce.  From an interview with The Hill:

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says it is “very lonely” running as an independent.

Since he quit his party, Crist says he has discovered that people he thought were friends turned out to be only Republican friends, who dropped Crist after he left the GOP.

Crist has lost so many campaign staffers that his sister is now running his third-party effort.

“When you’re not affiliated with a party, it can be very lonely, particularly initially,” Crist told The Hill in an hourlong phone interview.

He cannot be serious.  For a perpetual campaign machine like Crist who ran for and won statewide office in 2000, 2002, and 2006, to think that his fundraisers, staff, and get-out-the-vote activists supported him because he’s Charlie instead of because, as a Republican, he (supposedly) championed Republican causes, is comical.  If anything, Crist’s constant appeals to Democrats and Independents probably made Florida Republicans wonder why they worked so hard to advance his career.

Now that Crist has shown himself to be motivated by nothing more than his own ambition, his U.S. Senate race is the truest reflection of his political career: emptiness masquerading as conviction.

The last few days offered a study in contrasts.  Charles Djou won a plurality special election becoming just the third Republican to represent Hawaii in Congress.  He did so by sticking relentlessly to a pro-growth, low tax message that resonated in a heavily Democratic district.  While Djou won’t vote with the GOP on every issue, his commitment to fiscal conservatism will be a huge factor in whether he gets reelected to a full term in November.

Contrast Djou’s steady drum beat approach to Rand Paul’s improvisational jazz.  The Kentucky GOP senate nominee erased the euphoria of a double digit beat down of the establishment candidate last Tuesday by questioning the constitutionality of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a federal law mandating racial equality.  His points aside, Paul took his eye off the ball by engaging the issue.  The 2010 midterm election results – and Rand Paul’s popularity – are not the product of a national rethink on the scope of Congress’s power to enforce the 14^th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

It’s about the economy, Rand.  The safest ground for limited government types this cycle is to stay on message that tax-and-spend must end.  Just Djou it.

That’s the rumor coming out of Florida Republican circles and RedState’s Erick Erickson.  Not that such a move would be too much of a surprise since Crist is still the sitting governor of Florida and is losing by 18% to former state house speaker, Marco Rubio.  He needs something to spice up his campaign, and going rogue would certainly do it.  The question is, though, what kind of voter would Crist try to attract once he became un-tethered from a political party?

This isn’t the same scenario that faced Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) when he ran as an independent after losing the Connecticut Democratic primary to Ned Lamont in 2006.  There, netroots activists took over the election and alienated much of Lieberman’s comparatively moderate base.  Lieberman was also aided by some not so subtle help from the Bush Administration seeing the Iraq War supporter as an ally on foreign affairs.  Neither factor is present in this year’s Florida U.S. Senate race.  Not only is Rubio building the kind of following that could deliver a decisive victory among Republicans and Independents, there is no indication that the Obama Administration will coordinate with Crist to the detriment of the likely Democratic nominee, Kendrick Meek.

If Crist truly is considering leaving the GOP, he should instead “suspend” his campaign and concentrate on ending his one term as governor on as good a note as possible.  Otherwise, he’ll do further damage to his reputation while simultaneously wasting Floridians time and money on an ill-conceived vanity tour.

Today, the Senate  voted to expand the U.S. debt limit to a record $14.3 trillion, or more than our total economic output last year.  We will soon spend more than we produce.

Here is the roll call vote.  No Republican voted for the measure.

The following was distributed to all Senate offices today:

Key Vote Alert: H. J. Res. 45, the Coburn Rescission Amendment

Center for Individual Freedom Urges All Senators to Vote “Yes” on the Coburn Rescission Amendment

On behalf of its 250,000 activists and supporters nationwide, the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) urges all Senators to vote “Yes” on the Coburn amendment to H. J. Res. 45, the statutory debt limit increase.

CFIF supports numerous aspects of the amendment, including the more than $120 billion in federal spending reductions through the consolidation of duplicative government programs.

For example, the federal government currently has over 20 programs dedicated to reducing obesity. Because President Obama has pledge to “eliminate wasteful redundancy” in our federal budget, all Senators should support the Coburn amendment to reduce the nation’s bloated budget.

As the Senate considers yet another $1.9 trillion increase to our national debt, it only makes sense that our political leaders should take some strides toward reducing wasteful and duplicative spending. The Coburn amendment is one of many steps needed to reduce our staggering national debt.

For these reasons and more, CFIF urges all Senators to vote “Yes” on the Coburn amendment. Moreover, CFIF also opposes the $1.9 trillion debt limit increase and calls on Congress to further cut spending rather than recklessly add to the nation’s out-of-control debt.

Update: The Coburn amendment was defeated by a 37-57 vote.

Senator Ben Nelson’s home state kickbacks are notorious.  The “Cornhusker Kickback” is firmly entrenched in the American political lexicon and now Nelson is starting to hear it from his constituents.

According to this report from Politico, Nelson and his wife were eating at a local pizza joint when one patron recognized the longtime politician and yelled, “Get him the hell out of here!”  Other customers began to boo and Senator Nelson and his party disappeared into the Nebraska cold.

It appears that this local pressure is taking its toll on not only Nelson’s approval rating but also his conscience (if politicians have those).  Roll Call reports that Nelson has asked Harry Reid to drop the infamous Cornhusker Kickback.

As Andy Roth over at Club for Growth wrote, “Nebraskans will still be forced to swallow ObamaCare AND they’ll have to pay more for it.  Sorry, Senator Nelson, you can’t unring that bell.”

Much has been made of the special election in Massachusetts to replace the late Ted Kennedy.  The Senate race has major implications for the health care debate in Congress because if Republican candidate Scott Brown were to win next Tuesday, he could provide the 41st vote to stop ObamaCare in the Senate.

Obviously, any vote to limit the size and power of the federal government is welcome in Congress but the initial reward for taxpayers would be great.

As of tonight, however, the markets predict that Mr. Brown only has a slim 25.9 percent chance of victory against Democrat Martha Coakley, but his numbers are up sharply from earlier this month.

Regular polling has also seen a sharp tilt in his favor, as Brown has closed a 30 point gap and made the race essentially a tossup.  History is very much against Mr. Brown’s effort; Massachusetts has not elected a Republican Senator since Edward Brooke in 1972.

Lost during the health care fight in the Senate over the holidays were the votes in the House over yet another round of central planning stimulus provisions.

On its last roll call vote, the House narrowly, 217-212, passed an $180 billion “jobs for main street” bill that will exacerbate the federal deficit by another $64 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Not surprisingly, not a single Republican offered to support a third/fourth stimulus bill filled with pork-barrel spending and empty wealth transfers.  Democrats defected as well, with 38 voting “No.”

Now, the CBO has officially panned the legislation.  The final price tag over the next decade will be more than $180 billion, meaning Congress authorized $967 billion in 2009 alone for “stimulus” spending.

With all this, the unemployment rate remains at 10% and poll numbers indicate that no amount of wealth redistribution will increase Democratic majorities come Election Day.

This morning, the Senate invoked cloture on its scheme for government-run health care.  Under Senate rules, there will now be 30 hours of debate divided equally between the two parties, and then there is a strong possibility that the Senate will pass the legislation.

For Majority Leader Harry Reid, getting to this point was no easy task.  The typical horse trading that takes place on Capitol Hill was on overdrive lately as Leader Reid had to beg, borrow and deal to buy off each cynical Senator.

As much as the media and politicians on the Hill excoriated Governor Rod Blagojevich for selling President Obama’s old Senate seat, buying votes is a common occurrence in the nation’s capital.

As this piece from Politico demonstrates, what happens in Senate chambers typically borders on bribery.

For example:

• Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), who was once emphatic in his opposition to ObamaCare, got $45 million in federal funds for Medicaid expansion in Nebraska.   Other states were not fortunate enough to have an undecided Senator provide their state with the perks of federal largesse.

• Independent/Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (VT), who was previously opposed to the legislation, was awarded $10 billion in new funding for community health centers.

• Senator Nelson (D-NE) and Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) garnered an excise tax carve-out for their states; all other states will be forced to pay the tax.

• Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) received perhaps the most persuasive legislative nugget, a $300 million federal gift to Louisiana for Medicaid expansion.

In an attempt to rationalize this border-line legislative bribery, Senator Reid opined, “You’ll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states.  That’s what legislating is all about.  It’s compromise.”

Buying off votes = compromise?  Selling a Senate seat = felony?

Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) just announced that he will support the Senate health care bill, seemingly handing Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation by Christmas.

According to The Washington Post:

Asked if he had secured the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) told reporters, ‘It seems that way.’

The Senate is expected to work its way through a series of procedural motions over the next few days, with a vote on the legislation scheduled the evening of Dec. 24th. A conference with the House to produce a final bill would likely extend into January, Senate aides said.

Majority Leader Harry Reid this morning released his manager’s amendment to the Senate health care bill.  Read it here.

The Majority Leader is still planning to hold the first cloture vote on the bill as early as 1:00 a.m. Monday morning.

What’s Paul Krugman’s advice to liberals like MoveOn and Howard Dean upset over current health care negotiations in the Senate?  Pass the Bill.

It seems that liberals like Krugman want a bill just for the sake of passing a bill.   Politics and not principle appear to be his main motivation, which is strange coming from an economist and college professor.

Ideological purists like Howard Dean and MoveOn object to Harry Reid’s version of reform.  But why?  The current Senate bill supposedly lacks the government-run public option that liberals have been salivating over for the past year.  What remains from Senate negotiations is a hodgepodge of mandates, new regulations and higher taxes.

The one issue both sides of the aisle should agree on during the holidays is that the current health care bill is awful; it’s really really bad.

Conservatives and libertarians should hate the bill because it contains hundreds of billions in new taxes, an unconstitutional mandate for individual health insurance, an expensive employer mandate, costs over $2 trillion and it does nothing to bend the health care cost curve downward, among many other reasons.

Liberals should hate the bill because it (supposedly) contains no government-run public option, politically connected health care companies practically drafted the legislation, PhARMA supports it, socialist Senator Bernie Sanders doesn’t, it fails to cover 100% of the uninsured and it doesn’t bend the health care cost curve downward.

Dr. Krugman may attempt to use his perch at the New York Times to rally progressives toward a final health care push, but the ugly truth is that health care reform has become the product of Washington, D.C. politics.  That’s never a good thing.  President Obama rallied against Washington-style politics during his campaign but it appears that his bill and his political strategy have embraced the zero sum ultra-partisan approach that he derided so frequently in the past.

Dr. Krugman’s headline should have been “Kill this Bill.”

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) is one of the few good guys on Capitol Hill.  He and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) have taken the lead to stop government-run health care in the Senate.  In fact, they’re using every procedural tool under the sun to defeat the Senate’s disasterous version of “reform.”

According to The Hill newspaper, DeMint is even prepared to go so far as to slow debate and force Christmas Eve votes.  As DeMint noted, “I think it’s our responsibility to stretch this out because every day we do we have time to tell Americans what’s in it.”

For those of you looking for something interesting to watch over the holidays, the Senate will likely be in session on Christmas Eve.

This is the final push against government-run health care.  If you haven’t done so already, call your Senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them to oppose the Senate health care bill.

Though Democrats might be using phrases like “deficit neutral” or “budget neutral,” there is no doubt that the current Senate health care bill will greatly expand the size and scope of government.

In fact, the 2,074 pages of text create more than 70 new government programs.

Among the highlights/low-lights:

• Medicaid Global Payment System Demonstration Project.

• Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program.

• Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality.

• Community-Based Care Transitions Program.

• Patient Navigator Program (Are patients going to need a program to “navigate” health care reform?).

• Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (rationing).

Full list here.

That seems to be the solution from Senate Democrats seeking to broker a political path toward government-run health care.

With the public option running low on support, Senate Democrats are now floating a plan that would lower the age for Medicare enrollment to as low as 55.

According to Senate Democrats, even though Medicare has $89 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, adding a few million patients to the ledger shouldn’t be a problem.  Brilliant thinking.

More of CFIF on health care here.

The Senate, currently debating health care, held a rare Sunday session.  Beyond the normal bloviating, Senators did take at least one consequential vote.

John Ensign (R-NV) introduced an amendment that would have limited trial lawyer contingency fee amounts in medical malpractice cases.  Predictably, the amendment was overwhelmingly voted down, 32-66.

It appears that the trial lawyer lobby remains strong in the Senate.

Taxes, higher premiums and rationing.  That’s what consumers will face if the Senate’s version of health care reform becomes law.

According to a new report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), some self-insured individuals could see a jump in premiums if the Senate bill becomes law.   In some instances, the hike in premiums could be upwards of 13%.  As CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote on his blog yesterday, “The average, unsubsidized premium per person covered (including dependents) for new nongroup policies would be about 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage in that same year under current law.”

And for those of you who have employer-based “platinum” health insurance?  Expect new taxes on you and your employer.  The CBO projects that 1 in 5 people with employer-based coverage will be subject to the new 40% excise tax on health insurance.

With projected costs of the Senate bill reaching $6 trillion over ten years, it’s no wonder that 53% of the nation opposes this sordid version of “reform.”