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Former House Speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said the current GOP would be “incapable of competing” against Hillary Clinton should she run in 2016. Gingrich on NBC’s “Meet the Press” called Clinton a “very formidable” person who is married to “the most popular Democrat in the country.” “If [the Republicans'] competitor in ’16 is going to be Hillary Clinton, supported by Bill Clinton and presumably, a still relatively popular President Barack Obama, trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl. And the Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level,” Gingrich said.

Late-hour speeches by Republican Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and John McCain (Ariz.) on runaway military health costs led the Senate Tuesday to shelve a defense bill amendment that would have spared family members and retirees more burdensome co-pays on drug prescriptions filled off base. The timing of their opposition, in the last hours of consideration of the 2013 defense authorization bill when amendments were only being approved by unanimous consent, allowed Coburn and McCain to block the Senate from supporting the softer House-passed plan for raising prescription fees. There will be a second chance next week when House-Senate conferees iron...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know who's next? Doctors. And it's not Obamacare. It's not Medicare copayments. It's not any of that. You know how they're gonna go after doctors? Very simple, and I might even see Obama make this speech this summer. It might even happen before the campaign. It depends on how successful they judge this current tactic to be. See if you can envision President Obama, the president of the United States, after giving a speech where he says, "You got a business? You couldn't build that! Somebody else made that happen," transform to doctors. "Is it really...

Dehydrate dementia patients to death to save money: British Medical Journal editorial by Hilary White, Rome CorrespondentMon Jul 16, 2012 15:38 EST July 16, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The courts should not interfere with doctors who want to dehydrate to death incapacitated patients who are a drain on scarce financial resources, according to an editorial in this week’s edition of the prestigious British Medical Journal. Raanan Gillon, emeritus professor of medical ethics and former chairman of the Institute of Medical Ethics governing body, wrote that a ruling last year by the High Court against dehydrating an incapacitated patient to death was...

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Obamacare’s individual mandate on Thursday — and in fact dubbed it a tax in spite of the Obama administration’s denials — no one was more jubilant this past weekend than the recently hired agents at the Internal Revenue Service who get to keep their jobs, according to a law enforcement official in Washington, D.C. Their jobs are now safe and secure. Over the weekend, President Barack Obama’s minions swarmed the Sunday morning news shows arguing that Americans were not going to be taxed to raise money for Obamacare, yet reporters failed...

July 3, 2012 Romney Campaign Declaring Cease Fire on Health Care Posted by Staff In the aftermath of the Supreme Court health care ruling, the early conventional wisdom was that an unfavorable health care ruling at the court would be good for Republicans politically, even as it was a serious policy setback for conservatives. But that's not shaping up to be the case. Mitt Romney, after giving a brief statement decrying the decision, has been virtually silent on criticizing the health care law. He's been on vacation and his campaign has been giving off clear signals that it doesn't want...

If the new health care law wasn’t enough of a mess before last week’s Supreme Court decision, that ruling actually added another layer of cost, complexity and political contentiousness to the bill. By striking down part of the law that required states to expand their Medicaid programs, the court tossed a very hot potato into the laps of state lawmakers everywhere. ObamaCare required states to increase eligibility for Medicaid to 133 percent of the poverty line, or roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four. The expansion would also make childless single men (a notoriously high-cost group) eligible for...

An M.D. at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (leaders in the fight against HillaryCare and now ObamaCare) points out that Newt Gingrich helped to stop HillaryCare, only to turn around and implement many of its features later on. Newt Gingrich and other Republicans promise to repeal ObamaCare, but doctors remember what they did in 1996. Just after they “defeated” ClintonCare, they changed its name and enacted the very worst parts of it. more He'll betray us again if he's president. Gingrich is a big government statist. Only a fool would think this zebra has changed its stripes.

Gingrich: Health Insurance Mandate 'Started As Conservative Effort to Stop Hillarycare' By Terence P. Jeffrey December 11, 2011 (CNSNews.com) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Saturday defended his previous support of a federal mandate requiring people to buy health insurance by saying that "virtually every conservative saw the mandate as a less dangerous future" than the health-care plan being advanced by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 and that the idea of mandating that people buy health insurance "started as a conservative effort to stop Hillarycare in the 1990s." As recently as this May, Gingrich defended what he called...

So now there's video of Newt explicitly recommending an individual mandate. Hard to see this enhancing Newt's appeal as the not-Romney. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcSjLvWLcxE&feature=player_embedded

Herman Cain talks to Hannity. They discuss his book, Hillarycare, and some of Cain's history. http://www.mofopolitics.com/2011/10/03/herman-cain-on-hannity-10311/

Video: Herman Cain versus Bill Clinton (great watch!) http://youtu.be/-WP5dYfBBzU Imagine Cain debating Obama!

[snip] Interviews with a dozen advisers, including those inside campaigns and those aligned with outside groups, show lines of attack likely to emerge...... While Mr. Romney’s position as an early leader in the race has been shaken by Mr. Perry, it will almost certainly not be Mr. Romney who engages Mr. Perry first. He is already the subject of criticism from other rivals, including former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who questions Mr. Perry’s credentials. “We’ll see how conservative Rick Perry really is,” Mr. Santorum said. Here in Iowa, where the caucuses start the nominating contest, Mr. Perry is placing...

Texas Governor Rick Perry has been among the most vocal critics of President Obama’s health care reform initiative, and of Mitt Romney’s preceding health care program in Massachusetts. But in 1993, while serving as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Perry praised the efforts of then-first lady Hillary Clinton to reform health care, a precursor to Obama’s health care reform efforts. In a letter to Clinton, who is now U.S. Secretary of State, Perry wrote: “I think your efforts in trying to reform the nation’s health care system are most commendable.” “I would like to request that the task force give particular consideration...

Trump's anti-Bush, pro-Hillary comments on video. He also speaks well of Obama.

Over Labor Day weekend, in between failed fishing excursions and burgers, my friends and I played a popular party game: Guess the likely 2012 presidential field. We tossed around the usual suspects - Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty - and we agreed that if things don't get considerably better over the next two years, any one of them could give President Obama a run for his money. But for my friends - three thirtysomething left-of-center moderates who voted for Obama in 2008 - only one name would make them consider pulling the lever for someone...

Video of Herman Cain going to toe to toe with Bill Clinton over Hillarycare.

The phone rang and it was Ross Perot, who hasn't given an interview in years. Perot, who won 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, making him one of the strongest third-party candidates in American history, got straight to the point. "Remember what you wrote about John McCain in the March 13, 2000, NEWSWEEK?" "Sure," I lied. "When McCain called Perot 'nuttier than a fruitcake'?" The Texas billionaire, now 77, still has some scores to settle from the Vietnam era, and his timing is exquisite. Just days before the South Carolina GOP primary, he wants me to...

Piggybacking off of this Politico article on conservatives attacking RomneyCare, Jon Chait asks why in 2008, "nearly all (conservatives) were fine with Romney's health care plan." If you were reading the National Review -- which had a soft spot for Mitt -- I can see why you would have that impression, but the reality is a lot more complicated. For starters, there were a lot of conservatives who did raise issues about his health care plan, and we published a lot of them here at the Spectator. I was a frequent critic of both Romney and his health care plan,...

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(snip) In just three years, a majority of workers—51 percent—will be in plans subject to new federal requirements, according to the draft.

Have at it!

Democrats wrongly believe Americans voted their party out in droves in 1994 due to their party's inability to deliver universal health care legislation back then. It appeared to be a politically convenient way for Democrats to explain away their losses that year and think up new ways to tee up another universal health care bill in the future. Unfortunately for Democrats, what was once political spin to save face after losing the House and Senate to Republicans, became accepted as correct political analysis among party leaders and will likely cost Democrats even more seats come this November. In 1994 the...

Speaker Pelosi's Treasure Hunt for votes isn't going well.

Mitt Romney's role in overseeing passage of a universal health care plan in Massachusetts appears likely to cause headaches for the former Republican governor should he make his widely-expected run for the White House in 2012. As Matt Yglesias noted Sunday, all of the government-subsidized health care plans offered to low-income Massachusetts residents, under a program called Commonwealth Care, cover abortion.

The Daily Mail published this report on the events at one UK hospital. "Not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night. Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care. But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction." The inquiry found that: • Patients were left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month as nurses ignored their requests to use the toilet or change their sheets; • Four...

Televised Meeting to talk about healthcare..........

Three days before President Obama's supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House released a new blueprint that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters want they don't want anyway. Ah, the glory of "progressive" governance and democratic consent. "The President's Proposal," as the White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into...

Recently, President Barack Obama addressed a gathering of House Republicans at their annual retreat in Baltimore. This effort at cross-party outreach was somewhat marred when Obama accused the gathered Republicans of maliciously poisoning the public against his health care plan, complaining that they had portrayed it as a "Bolshevik plot." Obama's address to the GOP retreat was a philippic, an accusatory and condemnatory speech. Obama said in essence to his political adversaries: "The public would like my plan and it would succeed - if only you would stop lying about it." One common feature of these kinds of addresses is...

The details are alarming. At least a third of the 5000 or so Dutch patients who each year receive lethal doses of drugs from their doctors do not give their unequivocal consent. About 400 of these patients never even raise the issue of euthanasia with their doctors...But the most flagrant abuse of euthanasia was the killing of a two-day-old child with Down's syndrome - a child who would probably have lived for 40 to 50 years.

The Hill today is reporting that Harry Reid will be using the Reconciliation process to pass ObamaCare. The Democrats, who have been offering “bipartisanship,” apparently see the meeting on the 25th as a formality. They actually intend on having a bill done within the next 60 days. By Michael O’Brien - 02/20/10 01:44 PM ET Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said. “I’ve had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi,” Reid said during...

"Now, two weeks before publication of "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," Romney is pivoting again -- this time pitching himself as a problem solver whose background as a successful financier makes him the ideal candidate to rescue the ailing U.S. economy. But the real problem, said the paper, is "the real Mitt Romney — Harvard MBA, political scion, hard-working businessman, super-wealthy master of Wall Street offerings, devout Mormon — might not be what Republican primary voters actually want."

President Obama called Thursday for high-level talks with Republicans to work out a compromise on health care legislation, then putting the resulting bill to a vote in Congress. "If Congress decides we're not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, after all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not," Obama said. "That's how democracy works." Obama's comments were the first clear signal from the White House or Democrats in Congress on how they would proceed on...

BALTIMORE – President Barack Obama is accusing Republicans of portraying health care overhaul legislation as a "Bolshevik plot." ... The 1917 revolution in Russia brought the Bolsheviks to power. Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin were among the leaders.

Various representatives of the Barack Obama administration were out on the Sunday talk shows in the U.S. today, trying to spin the election of Senator Scott Brown (R -MA) [and how often do you see that abbreviation?] as being an endorsement of the Obama agenda, particularly with regard to health care. I witnessed the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on "Fox News Sunday," trying to do this very thing. Gibbs was making the very same kinds of arguments to host Chris Wallace as Howard Dean tried making a few days ago to MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Wallace was a lot...

Health Care: Will the administration seize the moment of Scott Brown's victory to work out real solutions, or will it follow Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the cliff? Or is it just about government control? Before Sen.-elect Brown became the Scott heard 'round the world, House Speaker Pelosi was asked what his victory in the bluest of blue states would mean. "Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," she replied in a bit of an understatement. The dynamic has changed, yet the Democrats, as the country song goes, apparently don't know when to hold them...

Election 2010: The back-to-back Senate retirements of Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd may be just the beginning. The people have seen the future of health care reform and found it doesn't work. Apres moi, le deluge. We don't know what the Mayan calendar says about 2010, but it's starting to look like the end of the world for Democratic electoral prospects. Americans who watched in shock as government tried to step between them and their doctors, may have the last laugh. The tea party isn't over until the angry mob votes. As rage grew over the attempt to nationalize one-sixth...

As haggling between House and Senate versions of national health care reform gets under way in Washington, Massachusetts residents may be feeling a bit of dejà vu. The insurance mandates and cost controls being negotiated on Capitol Hill are the same polarizing issues that echoed in Beacon Hill chambers three years ago. In 2006, then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed the nation's most ambitious and complex health reform initiative with the goal of providing universal health care coverage to all Massachusetts residents. Like the bill taking shape in Congress, the state's health legislation required all residents to obtain health insurance or face...

Obama Defends Self Against Black Critics WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Monday rebutted critics who say he isn't showing enough compassion toward black America, citing his health care effort as one example he says "will be hugely important" for blacks. Obama said another example is the billions of dollars in aid to states included in the economic stimulus bill, money that was used to save thousands of teachers, firefighters and police officers from losing their jobs. He said many of those workers are black. "So this notion, somehow, that because there wasn't a transformation overnight that we've been neglectful...

The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack reports tonight that Illinois Democrat Sen. Roland Burris is claiming credit for inserting a provision that may benefit ACORN. But it’s not just the ACORN angle that’s scandalous. It’s the race hustler shakedown. Why, oh, why do we need to be funding massive new federal bureaucracies to create separate “Offices of Minority Health” in six separate health care agencies:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave his challenger in the 2008 presidential election a stiff review Sunday as President Barack Obama nears completion of his first year in office. "[Obama] said there would be a change in the climate in Washington," McCain said. "There's been a change. It's more partisan. It's more bitterly divided than it's been." (snip) "At least under 'Hillarycare' they tried seriously to negotiate with Republicans," McCain said."There's been -- there has been no effort that I know of that -- serious across-the-table negotiations, such as I have engaged in with Democrats and with other administrations. And that...

As the Congressional Budget Office explained: "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." Yet, all of the House and Senate health-care bills being debated require Americans to either obtain or purchase expensive health insurance, estimated to cost up to $15,000 per year for a typical family, or pay substantial tax penalties for not doing so. The purpose of this compulsory contract, coupled with the arbitrary price ratios and...

WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton yesterday rode in with an 11th-hour attempt to save the sputtering Senate health-care bill, as liberal backlash threatened to torpedo President Obama's top domestic priority. Clinton spoke out with the clock set to strike on Obama's self-imposed Christmas deadline for the Senate passing a bill. The White House aggressively took to TV to push back against liberal outrage -- while struggling, without success, to get the lone Democratic Senate holdout, Nebraska's Ben Nelson, on board. Clinton -- who saw his own attempt at a health-care overhaul crash on the shoals of Congress in 1994 -- wrote...

Democratic senators and congressmen have been trying to convince each other, particularly their more conservative colleagues, that they'll all be better off in the 2010 elections--and will avoid a repeat of their 1994 debacle--if they pass Obama-care. Bill Clinton, half of the central duo in the failed attempt to pass Hillarycare in 1994, recently addressed Senate Democrats and sang the party-line tune. Speaking to reporters afterward, Clinton said, "I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass it as soon as they can. .  .  . The worst thing to do is nothing." But the evidence cuts the other...

WASHINGTON – Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats united Saturday night to push historic health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare. The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally. The spectator galleries...

(McConnell: It's a 'Monstrosity of a Bill') (GOP: 'This Is Not True Health Care Reform') WASHINGTON (AP) -- Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats united Saturday night to push historic health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare.The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or...

ON Fox News now, Vote is underway!!!

C-SPAN 2 is carrying the Senate floor debate live this afternoon.The Democrats control the floor right now. Earlier, Republican Senators Judd Gregg, Kit Bond, Jeff Sessions and David Vitter gave good speeches and dialogues on the budget-busting effects of ObamaCare.Maria Cantwell is speaking now. Mary Landrieu is excpected to speak shortly.The cloture vote is scheduled for 8 p.m. EST tonight.

The desperate Democrats never cease to amaze me. Let's try to think this through. They want to get government-run health care approved, so for the "big gun" to close the deal, they bring in the last Democrat to fail at getting it passed, Slick Willy, Bill Clinton. Clinton's job is to exert some old-fashioned arm-twisting to get more moderate Democrats in the Senate to pass Obamacare.

Just had the 218th vote, which is what they need to psas th ebill