Posted on 11/16/2013 10:35:18 AM PST by SeekAndFind
We mentioned earlier this week how red state Democrat Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina had watched as a previously slim but solid lead in the polls had evaporated of late. It seems that this was no momentary glitch in the numbers and the situation continues to deteriorate. The slide continued with what could only be described as a disastrous conference call with reporters, eager to pepper her with questions about her role in the development and launch of Obamacare, which even the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank saw as a ship taking on water.
Well, her problem begins with Obamacare, ends with Obamacare and has a whole lot of Obamacare in between.
Hagan hosted a conference call for reporters Tuesday morning to discuss the problems with the health-care law’s rollout, and the Q&A session was so painful that the senator should qualify for trauma coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Hagan tried reciting some of the standard issue White House talking points to claw her way out of that one, but things only got worse when one of her spokeswomen followed up to try to clean up the mess. (From Big Government and the local paper the News & Record.)
“First, this is nothing more than a political stunt that does nothing to help more people get access to care and highlights the difference between Kay, who is working to fix this law, and her opponents who don’t have any plan to reform our broken health care system,” Hagan spokeswoman Sadie Weiner told the News and Record, a Greensboro, NC newspaper. “In her capacity as a member of the HELP Committee, Senator Hagan was involved with that committee’s markup of the health care reform bill in the summer of 2009.”
In the next sentence of the quote, Weiner states that her boss Hagan was aware of the fact that people would lose their healthcare plans under Obamacare some time ago.
“Once insurance companies began disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would be canceling it became clear that more people would be getting cancellation letters,” Weiner said.
Did you catch that one – two punch in those answers? Not only was her boss, Senator Hagan, an instrumental player in crafting the bill, but she was also aware that insurance companies were going to be cancelling policies as soon as it went into effect. It’s bad enough that the popularity of Obamacare in North Carolina is rapidly approaching that of a raging case of the crabs, but that sort of admission plants her firmly in the series of shifting denials and stories about precisely who knew what when.
If Kay Hagan, one of the busy bees working on the bill, was aware that many people who liked their policy would not, in fact, be able to keep it, how did the President not know? Did she not find it worth mentioning to him? And since the “you can’t keep that” effect is presumably hitting people in her own state, how does she square up not letting the voters in on this little secret before she voted for it? Either way, somebody has some explaining to do, and there is a pack of GOP challengers who are all very interested in that Senate seat who are more than happy to discuss the matter with her in the coming battle. I think we can put North Carolina in play as one of the six seats the GOP needs to pick up next year.
Republicans have a severe shortage of spine and guts. That is why I think we need to recruit strong military veterans who know what protecting and defending the Constitution and country mean. Definitely, unlike the Elitist, inside-the- Beltway, power-hungry, career politicians who want to get along with Liberals!!
What is AMAC? $16 per year?
Ha, ha. Now, that's funny. Best metaphor of the day!
Well, the red states need to be careful about developing things like Research Triangles and big universities then. Sure, they create gobs of jobs and wealth -- but they do tend to attract those blue types.
They are a Seniors organization. Conservative in nature. And offer insurance, roadside assistance plans, etc.
I'm sorry if you misunderstood that.
I humbly would suggest that North Carolina Republicans avoid nominating a Paulbot with no record such as Brannon and instead nominate an experienced, proven conservative such as Speaker Thom Tillis. http://thomtillis.com/
I humbly suggest that status quo career politicians and consultants who don’t know conservatism from a hole in the ground, having foisting candidates such as Richard Burr or Liddy Dole upon us in the past, are not to be trusted. They’ll vote just like Kay Hagen given half the chance and political cover.
Well, Thom Tillis first ran for office in 2006, after a long career in business, so he’s hardly a career politician. And with the conservative revolution he’s helped lead in NC since 2011, he’s no status quo guy.
And at least we know what Thom Tillis stands for. What do we know about Brannon, other than he’s a Ron Paul acolyte who talks conservative (although apparently a good part of his campaign was lifted outright from Rand Paul’s)?
And I would posit that one of the reasons why Liddy Dole was able to fool NC Republicans (including even Jesse Helms) into thinking she was one of them was that she had no real record at which one could look to prove or disprove her conservative bona fides. Tillis has cast hundreds of public votes during the past 7 years in the state house, so he can’t claim to be something that he’s not. Brannon is the cypher here, and we only have his word for what he claims.
What is AMAC? $16 per year?
AMAC is the Conservative answer to AARP. It stands for The Association of Mature American Citizens. They are what AARP started out to be.
Go here, and read all about them:
http://amac.us/join-amac?gclid=CMbBh7Xz6roCFaN_QgodJ3EATw
SEN. KAY HAGAN (D-N.C.): ‘People who have insurance they’re happy with can keep it’ “We need to support the private insurance industry so that people who have insurance they’re happy with can keep it while also providing a backstop option for people without access to affordable coverage.” (“Republicans Vent As Other Compromise Plans Get Aired,” National Journal’s Congress Daily, 6/18/09)
I’s suggest nominating someone who can WIN.
Currently Dr. Brannon is ahead of Mrs. Hagan by a couple of percentage points, and he’s a constitutional conservative.
Speaker Tillis is a couple of points behind Mrs. Hagan....
You are referring, of course, to the poll recently released by NC Democrat Tom Jensen’s PPP. You know, the pollster who found that Todd Akin was ahead of McCaskill in MO *after* his rape remarks went viral, so as to convince Akin not to drop out. So we know who Democrats want to face in the general ....
I don’t really care who Democrats want to face the bottom line is Obamacare is going to sink many of them including Hagan.
I’d prefer a US Senator who reminds ME of Jesse Helms. I am not going to attack Mr. Tillis because you make some valid points, and I would hope that he would go to Washington (if he made it through the primary) with the same vigor as Rand Paul (who I guess you don’t like since you negatively referred to Mr. Brannon as a “Paul Bot”) or a Ted Cruz.
I want someone who I KNOW will stand up for our Constitutional rights.
Let me ask you one question have you ever even met either Mr. Brannon or Mr. Tillis? (Disclaimer I don’t know Mr. Tillis), but do know Mr. Brannon, and have heard him speak!
I have not met either Mr. Tillis or Dr. Brannon. But I’ve never met Ron Paul, either, and that doesn’t mean that I don’t know that he’s a crazy anti-Semite who only claimed to be a Republican out of political convenience (heck, he quit the GOP *during the Reagan presidency*. I am extremely wary of an unknown quantity such as Brannon who chooses to align himself with L. Ron Paul’s cult.
As for Rand Paul, while he generally shies away from his father’s crazier positions (for example, Rand hasn’t come out in favor of legalizing heroin yet), neither has he criticized *anything* his father has ever said, and father and son claim that they agree on 95% of issues. Having the Paulistinians take over the GOP would set back the conservative cause by 20 years, and Rand Paul pretty much would be the last person I would like to see win the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.
Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is a 100% conservative with no ties to crazy hucksters and whom we can trust to defend our country against foreign enemies (unlike Rand Paul, who would wait for Iran to shoot a nuclear missile at us before doing anything). I think that Cruz would make a great president , and he’s certainly on my short list of those I’d like to see run in 2016. (Actually, I’d like to see Rand run for president in 2016, too, bit only so that he doesn’t run for reelection to the Senate and thus we can send him back to being a full-time ophthalmologist when we trounce him in the presidential primaries just like we did to his 0-100 father before him.)
Branonn is a Paulite? Ugh.
So you think the anti-Tillis case is overblown?
I don’t know. From what I’ve heard of Tillis from some FReepers, he’s too much an establishment guy. At this point, we need someone who’s going to go to the Senate and knock over the furniture.
Well, I would argue that the NC House has knocked over quite a bit of furniture since Tillis became Speaker in 2011. And I don’t think that we need any additional Paulistinian furniture-knocking in Congress. So if it’s between Tillis and Brannon, there’s no doubt in my mind whom to support.
Let’s just hope that Tills campaign itself doesn’t insult people like his supporters do.
It’s ok to disagree with people on the issues, but to demean them (as “paulbots” etc..) IS NOT! Which is what you were doing trying to insult Mr. Brannon, rather than trying to WIN people to your POV. (remember elections are about building coalitions, not pushing people away..unless you are saying that Mr. Tillis doesn’t want Ron/Rand Paul type people to vote for him?)?
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