How Scott Brown Could Hurt Republicans

While the election isn't over, for the moment, I'm going to assume the polls are right and that Scott Brown will win the Senate race in Massachusetts, breaking the Democrats filibuster-proof 60 vote majority.

Scott Brown's election is a rejection by voters, not just in Massachusetts, but nationwide, of the leftist, socialist policies of Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the democrats.

However, Americans are not heartily embracing Republicans, either.

In 1994, Americans overwhelmingly told Washington that they did not want a liberal socialist agenda. Clinton took that woodshed experience to heart and moved to the center in how he governed. Of course, he had to. He had to work with a conservative majority in Congress. Since that time, Republicans have held a majority in Congress, until 2006. They squandered that opportunity. Instead of being fiscally responsible and fixing many of the problems created by the democrats since they have been in charge of at least one house of Congress since 1948, they spent money bigger and faster than the democrats, only on their own agenda.

Americans are generally a generous and tolerant people. Except when you waste their money. And that's just what the Republicans had done.

Now, it's the Democrats turn. They have done what democrats do and what Americans don't want them to do. Only bigger and faster than the Republicans.

This spending spree, which has been going on, now, for decades has broken the bank and our current economic situation is the result. Wall Street knows this. Businesses know this. And they know that proposed legislation on health care and a host of other issues will result in higher taxes and other fees that, right now, businesses can't afford.

That's how Scott Brown could hurt Republicans.

With his election, the leftist socialist agenda of Obama and the dems is derailed. Preventing them from passing all sorts of socialist policies and programs will actually help stabilize the economy. Businesses will be more comfortable hiring again. The stock market will start to take a more bullish direction.

And who will take credit for "fixing" everything? Yep. The president gets the blame when things go bad, and takes the credit when things go well. With the election of a fiscally conservative president a year ago, we could have already been out of this mess and on the road to economic prosperity. Obama and the socialist Congress have KEPT us in this recession longer than necessary. Scott Brown, a freshman Republican Senator from Massachusetts could actually pull us out of the recession without enacting a single piece of legislation. And in doing so, he could prevent his own re-election and the election of numerous other Republicans across the nation.

Prostitutes in Washington

There is an old joke about a man and woman who meet in a bar. The man asks the attractive, young woman, "Would you have sex with me for one million dollars?"

The woman was shocked by the question. Nevertheless, she thought for a moment and finally responded, somewhat reluctantly, in the affirmative. She was not the type to do that sort of thing, but money is always tight, and, after all, a million bucks is a million bucks, she reasoned.

Then the man asked a second question. "Would you have sex with me for fifty bucks?"

Tempted to slap him, the woman was even more shocked than she was by the first question. "Of COURSE NOT!" she insisted. "What kind of woman do you think I am?"

The man replied calmly, "We've already established what kind of woman you are. Now, we are just haggling over the price."

While intended for humor, the story points out an important observation about character. You either have it or you don't. Character can't be bought; not for any price.

Elected officials go to Washington for, primarily, one reason. To do what is in the best interest of the nation within the boundaries of the Constitution. Now, each of them has their own interpretation of what is in the best interest of the country and what the Constitution has to say about that.

There is a group of Democrats who like to call themselves "Blue Dog Democrats." They tell us that they are fiscally conservative and Constitutionally moderate. However, they've all been bought. They are like the young ... uh ... prostitute ... in our story. They have no character. They only have a higher price.

Rush Limbaugh this week just flat out called them prostitutes. He said on his radio program, "Prostitution is now legal in Washington, D.C.," and went on to call out these "Senators of the evening." Rush is right.

There are no fiscally conservative democrats. There are no blue dog democrats. There are only democrats. And democrats see as their function to insert government into every aspect of our daily lives that they can possibly get away with, and then to tax us for the "favor."

I hope these democrats from the so called "red states" and from swing states are taken to the woodshed. They all deserve to be unemployed next year. Unfortunately, it has been my observation that many voters have a memory that is about as long as the evening news program.

Constitutionality of Obamacare Challenged

Two republican senators are trying to stop Obamacare on the grounds of constitutionality. Whenever you have the time available, you may want to send Senators DeMint and Ensign handwritten thank you cards for actually possessing the testicular fortitude to stand up and take their oath to the Constitution seriously. (Unlike Harry Reid who wants to make sure that no future congress will be able to change death panel recommendations.)

From Senator DeMint’s senate site:

Ensign, DeMint to Force Vote on Health Care Bill Unconstitutionality

December 22, 2009 – WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and John Ensign (R-Nevada), raised a Constitutional Point of Order on the Senate floor against the Democrat health care takeover bill on behalf of the Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators. The Senate will vote tomorrow on the bill’s constitutionality.

“I am incredibly concerned that the Democrats’ proposed individual mandate provision takes away too much freedom and choice from Americans across the country,” said Senator Ensign. “As an American, I felt the obligation to stand up for the individual freedom of every citizen to make their own decision on this issue. I don’t believe Congress has the legal authority to force this mandate on its citizens.”

“Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,” said Senator DeMint. “This is not at all like car insurance, you can choose not to drive but Americans will have no choice whether to buy government-approved insurance. This is nothing more than a bailout and takeover of insurance companies. We’re forcing Americans to buy insurance under penalty of law and then Washington bureaucrats will then dictate what these companies can sell to Americans. This is not liberty, it is tyranny of good intentions by elites in Washington who think they can plan our lives better than we can.”

Americans who fail to buy health insurance, according to the Democrats’ bill, would be subject to financial penalties. The senators believe the bill is unconstitutional because the insurance mandate is not authorized by any of the limited enumerated powers granted to the federal government. The individual mandate also likely violates the “takings” clause of the 5th Amendment.

The Democrats’ healthcare reform bill requires Americans to buy health insurance “whether or not they ever visit a doctor, get a prescription or have an operation.” If an American chooses not to buy health insurance coverage, they will face rapidly increasing taxes that will rise to $750 or 2% of their taxable income, whichever is greater.

The Congressional Budget Office once stated “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

A legal study by scholars at the nonpartisan Heritage Foundation concluded: “An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented– not just in scope but in kind–and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents.”

Menu For Health Care Reform

Tom Purcell is a syndicated columnist for the Philedelphia Enquirer. He has written an excellent column about the attempted government takeover of our health care system.

Before the government takes over more of our health care system, the least it can do is make a decent sandwich.

I refer to an interesting report that ran in The Washington Post one year ago.

The U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee oversees a network of restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops throughout the Senate complex on Capitol Hill.

Its crown jewel is the ornate Senate Dining Hall, where senators and their guests are served by waiters wearing jackets and ties.

But there was a problem: The restaurant operation was losing lots of money.

Why? For starters, the food stunk. Many Senate staffers preferred to flock across the Capitol to lunch at the privately managed House cafeteria. It offered more options and tastier grub.

The once-profitable Senate catering division had lost customers, too. That's because senators began requesting waivers so they could hire private caterers for their special events.

Imagine that: a U.S. senator seeking special treatment.

In any event, the Senate-run operation was bleeding red ink. It had lost $18 million since 2003. It was on track to lose $2 million in 2008 alone — a loss taxpayers had to eat.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., then-chairwoman of the Rules and Administration Committee, wrote to her colleagues about the matter.

She cited a troubling Government Accountability Office finding: The government employees who managed the Senate restaurants had little interest in breaking even. This was "due to an expectation that the restaurants would operate at a deficit annually."

Imagine that: a government operation that runs an annual deficit.

The solution was obvious to some: Run the Senate restaurant system the same way as the House system.

In the 1980s, you see, the Democrat-controlled House brought in a private contractor, Restaurant Associates of New York, to manage its cafeteria operations. Its food is so good — and its operations run so well — that Restaurant Associates paid $1.2 million in commissions to the House between 2003 and 2008.

And so, last summer, the Democrat-controlled Senate decided to do the same. It established basic guidelines — it required that the government employees who chose to stay on would enjoy the same pay and be allowed to unionize, for instance — and contracted Restaurant Associates to have at it.

There is a lesson here about the best way for the government to collaborate with the private sector to unleash the best of human nature to attain the best possible results.

The Senate Dining Hall food stunk. The reason the operation had been losing lots of taxpayer money was that there was no incentive to do otherwise.

Under the government model, restaurant employees were more prone to be agitated by hungry customers than pleased to serve them. The more customers who came in, after all, the more work employees and managers had to do.

Who can blame government employees for feeling this way? Whether or not customers came in to dine, government employees and managers still got their pay and their benefits.

A private organization, though, must turn a profit or the money it loses will be its own. If its employees work hard to please customers — by offering excellent grub and excellent service — the organization will thrive and every employee will benefit.

It's simple human nature: When people have a stake in something, they attain better results.

That's what many lawmakers are missing as they attempt to "reform" our health care system. Most folks don't want the government to micromanage the decisions that are ours to make. We want to increase our stake.

We want to choose our own insurance and providers. We want more options, not fewer. We want to unleash private individuals and private organizations to innovate ways to improve care and reduce costs — not more government meddling.

Government's best role here is to reset some basic guidelines to address the basic challenges — portability, pre-existing conditions, the uninsured, cost, etc. — then get the heck out of the way.

For goodness' sake, a group of elite senators couldn't oversee a lousy cafeteria operation. What makes them think they can oversee a massive health care system?

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Senate

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

Whoa…isn’t this the president who gave George W. Bush SUCH a hard time about Presidential Signing Statements, before he fell in love with them? Now, suddenly, it’s – hey, I’m Barack Obama, and I won; I don’t have to follow the constitution! I don’t even need that Senate!

President Clinton once said, “flick of the wrist, law of the land; pretty cool.” But even he understood that, umm…as Glenn says, if you bypass the Senate, it's not a treaty.

Wishing not to oversnark, Glenn writes:

A President can, of course, abide by a treaty even if it’s not ratified, so long as he’s not asserting any binding effect on parties not under his supervision, which is likely the case here. Still, it’s of a piece with the “it’s a rush, we don’t have time for the formalities” approach that this Administration has favored.

Emphasis mine, because it is so true: everything Obama does is hasty, rushed and performed under a big, flashing red sign that screams, “emergency; no time to discuss, no time to read, no time for bothersome procedure…just do what I want, and trust me, we’ll be fine…three minutes to critical mass…”

I can only imagine the guttural sounds of outrage that would be coming from the press and the left if Dubya had tried this.

Ed Morrissey wonders why this president needs to strongarm on this: “…how many seats in the Senate does Obama’s party hold? Isn’t it 60? If Obama is simply moving forward with a straightforward, supportable treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear stockpiles in an effective verification system, why couldn’t he get a quick ratification?

Well, that is, if the deal actually does put in place an effective verification system and doesn’t amount to a de facto unilateral disarmament. With exactly five months to win Senate approval, the effort by the Obama White House in floating this idea now makes it sound like Obama wants to give away the store in order to score some points with his 1980s no-nukes agenda. And as much as the Democrats howled over the supposed devotion of George Bush to a “unitary executive,” Obama seems to have no trouble bypassing the check on executive power for treaty negotiation written explicitly into the Constitution, in Article II, Section 2.

Minnesota's Joke on America

The people of Minnesota now have a comedian representing them in the Senate. The joke, however, might wind up on them.

Unless he gets in a serious hurry (and that's doubtful), chances are high that Al Franken will be a one-term Senator. Although there is no IQ test to get elected to Congress, diplomacy is required to do the job well. If there is one thing Franken is not, it's diplomatic.

Franken should realize that his victory over Coleman has less to do with Coleman's job performance and more to do with the Democrat who was at the head of the November 2008 ticket, the unpopularity of Bush, and a few precincts in which more voters voted for Franken than live in the precinct. In other words, the razor-thin margin of "victory" can be in no way considered a "mandate," and he would be wise to bear that in mind as he heads to Capitol Hill.

Knowing Franken, he won't.

Although Franken gives Democrats their filibuster-proof majority, it probably won't last long. With Obama's job approval rating on the decline and more Americans saying they trust the Democrats less and the Republicans more to manage the nations' finances and economy, Franken will have to learn to compromise if he wants to keep his job. Given his caustic personality and his manic-depressive demeanor, however, that, too, is unlikely.

Get ready, America. The freak show has just begun.