Posted on 09/16/2013 7:31:35 PM PDT by LD Jackson
Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has backed off his statement comparing the implementation of Obamacare to a train wreck. He was on Fox Business with Stuart Varney and said he thought Obamacare would be a train wreck only “if they do not implement it very well” but that the Obama administration is “doing a pretty good job” at getting it up and running. “I don’t expect a train wreck. I think the train’s going to keep running, not maybe totally on time, but it’s going to be pretty efficient.”
Senator Baucus also said that if there was a vote to delay implementing Obamacare, he would oppose it.
Several questions immediately come to mind that I would like to ask the Senator. Are you aware that a majority of Montanans oppose the federal health care law? If you think they are doing a “pretty good job” at getting it up and running then why the delays? What’s the hold up? Why are all the unions now demanding the exemptions they were promised but are apparently not going to get? And lastly, what has the NSA discovered in your emails and phone calls that is making you change your position on this legislative travesty?
This is going to cause confusion amongst the Obama Troof Squads that have been commenting on articles that Baucus was just “taken out of context”.
BOLSHEVIK!
The last time I saw him he was on the floor of the Senate — drunk. Now that’s the kind of guy you want to place the future of your family with.
OH PLEASE.... That’s not selling your soul. This is selling your soul.
“Rep. Bart Stupak’s announcement Friday that he would not seek re-election this fall is a big story but no surprise, given the political whiplash he endured throughout the health care reform debate.
The Michigan Democrat and ardent pro-life Catholic was pilloried for months by many in his own party. He was seen as an obstructionist who held health care reform hostage over his demands to bar taxpayer funding of abortion coverage and was pummeled for nearly killing the bill even when it seemed all his conditions had been met.
Then when Stupak negotiated a last-minute deal for an executive order supporting his stand, and delivered the handful of House votes that helped seal the bill’s success, he was savaged by his erstwhile allies in the anti-abortion lobbies and ridiculed by Republicans and social conservatives who had once seen him as a heroic ally in efforts to defeat the reform legislation.
During the vote, a GOP congressman shouted “baby killer!” at Stupak, and he and his family received death threats after the passage. Bloggers and activists were particularly brutal, deriding Stupak as a “Judas” who betrayed the movement for political expediency. Stupak’s invitation to be the keynote speaker at the Illinois Catholic Prayer Breakfast later this month was rescinded, and the Susan B. Anthony List, a leading anti-abortion group, abruptly cancelled its plans to give Stupak its “Defender of Life” award on the Wednesday after the March 21 health care vote that clinched passage.
So is Stupak’s departure a win for anti-abortion groups? Or at least a measure of vindication for conservatives after what they saw as the huge setback of the health care passage?
Some see it that way.
“Good riddance,” wrote Thomas Peters, a young activist at the conservative lobby, Catholic Vote Action. At National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez gave Stupak no quarter, blasting him for “bowing at the altar of a party that long ago sold its soul to the culture of death.”
But others who are no fans of Stupak are also not so sure his retirement will help the larger pro-life cause.
“In the long term, no,” said Deal Hudson, who led the Catholic outreach efforts for George W. Bush. “He was one of a few Democrats who care about the protection of the unborn.”
According to some abortion opponents, the growing influence of pro-life Democrats like Stupak — even if they were hardly welcomed at the Democrats’ main table — gave abortion foes bipartisan leverage rather than leaving them (and their cause) as the political captive of the GOP and its electoral fortunes. By pushing out abortion opponents like Stupak, abortion opponents may help the Republican Party, yet do their movement no favors.
But Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life, which organizes and supports pro-life Democrats across the country and in Congress, rejected the suggestion that Stupak’s resignation signals the imminent decline of a small but growing group of congressional candidates who have been gaining acceptance with the party since the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.
“A lot of the stories are saying that this is the end of pro-life Democrats. But that’s coming from Republicans,” Day said. “The Republican Party does not want a strong pro-life voice within the Democratic party because that takes away a wedge issue for them.”
Day said that Stupak “has inspired a new generation of pro-life Democrats” and noted that Stupak had a number of allies in the House (although the Senate is not such friendly turf). “You’ll hear a lot more from pro-life Democrats. This is not the end. it’s the beginning,” she said.
We’ll soon find out.
Stupak, a nine-term congressman from Michigan’s 1st District, which covers the Upper Peninsula region, was expecting a primary challenge in August from former Charlevoix County Commissioner Connie Saltonstall. She was running as a pro-choice challenger representing the disillusioned left flank of the party.
While a Saltonstall victory in the primary — and the general election — would please pro-choice activists no end, Democratic sources say the party is more likely to push other candidates who would have a better shot at winning in November in a district that trends pro-life and blue-collar. Stupak was able to do that, safely winning re-election even as George W. Bush carried the Upper Peninsula region in 2000 and 2004.
A likely front-runner for Stupak’s mantle is former congressman and current state senator Jim Barcia, who opposes abortion and is a popular and well-known figure in the area. If the party backs Barcia or someone like him, and gets behind other vulnerable pro-life Democrats like freshman Reps. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) and Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.), then Day’s forecast may win out.
But those candidates also have to win in November, and party leaders are clearly more concerned than ever in the wake of Stupak’s departure.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama himself had urged Stupak to stay, but neither they nor Michigan’s own Democratic heavyweights, Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Dingell, could convince Stupak to run again. Their pain was clear. “Bart Stupak is a public servant of great integrity and genuine conscience,” Levin said in a statement on Friday. “I deeply regret his decision from a public perspective, but I also respect and understand his decision because of the longevity of his service and the tremendous sacrifice that his service has entailed for him and his family.”
Stupak was a favorite target of the Tea Party Express, which was holding events in his district this week and had already launched political ads against him. So naturally Republicans were gleeful at Stupak’s decision.
“After selling his soul to Nancy Pelosi, it appears that Bart Stupak finally found the courage to tell her no,” said Ken Spain, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The political fallout over the Democrats’ government takeover of health care has put the political careers of many Democrats in jeopardy thanks in part to Stupak’s decision to abandon his alleged pro-life principles.”
Such reactions were to be expected. On the other hand, it is also possible that so many bridges had been burned between pro-life Democrats and pro-life lobbies after the health care vote that Stupak’s retirement is only the recognition of a chasm so wide it was unlikely to be narrowed any time soon.
Last month after the health care vote, Stupak, who had a 100 percent right-to-life voting record, lashed out. He called the Catholic bishops and conservative anti-abortion lobbies he once worked with on the legislation “hypocrites” for not supporting the bill after he won last-minute concessions from the White House.
With the other retirement Friday — that of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens — it appears likely that abortion rights will flare up again as a central issue during a confirmation hearing this summer, giving Democrats and Republicans more incentive to use abortion as a wedge issue, and more fodder for the fall campaign.”
And as soon as his soul was sold, the Devil turned around and said, “DO YOU REALLY THINK I WAS GOING TO GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANTED? YOU SOLD YOUR SOUL. YOU AREN’T WORTH SQUAT.”
This isn't a train wreck, either.
Senator Baucus: Obamacare No Longer A Train Wreck
It's a real fast landing of a solid brick Boeing 747.
Neither is this.
....or this.
Sounds like he got a "talkin' to!!
Now it is a plane crash? Flying into the WH?
The senator is an ass.
Let them eat cake. That didn’t work out very well for the last group of folks that made that statement to the common people
There’s one thing about a train wreck. You can wish all you want and say that it’s not going to happen. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. All the movie stars and twerkers on the planet can’t stop it. It’s going to happen.
Not a train wreck — more like an Asian Tsunami.
Baucus, lol!
What a shameless lying bastard.
I don’t think he’s lying for money, though. The Chicgo mob doesn’t waste money if it has dirt. Remember how nervous people were when the Clintons stole those 1,000+ FBI files? Now imagine what the Chicago mob can do with the NSA data base..
Just listened to the very tail end of an interview with a medical doctor who said that it is going to collapse because it will be impossible to implement.
She also said young people are going to look at the computer screen and see they have to pay $600 a month, and they are going to refuse outright because they have student loans to pay off and I imagine upcoming weddings, trips, etc. In other words, a life. They are going to look at $600 of their hard earned money and absolutely refuse.
Get enough people to think that way, and it’s over.
In other words they will not let others make that choice for them, regardless of what that traitor on the US Supreme Court decreed..
It’s not WHAT you know.
It’s not WHO you know.
.
.
..
It’s WHAT you know about WHOM.
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