Timothy Birdnow

With the collapse of Ryanocare in the House of Representatives, the media is giddily high filing because Trump experienced his first major defeat. The Donald had put all his political prestige on the line to promote Pee Wee Ryan's version of Obamacare, and it has now failed. Oh joyous day! The little troll with the Hair Club for Men hairdo has taken it in the shorts! The media is pleased.

But not as pleased as would be expected and neither are the Democrats. There was no real rejoicing in the Party that forced socialized medicine on an unaccepting America, and there is a simple reason why; Ryanocare was something the Donkeys and the media hoped the Republicans would pass. It was a trap. (Picture a giant langoustine in a flight suit at this point, please.)

Look, Ryan's plan did not get rid of Obamacare. It did streamline it in some areas, and got rid of a few of the more onerous things, but it left most of the budget busting policies (like "children" being able to stay on a parent's insurance until their silver wedding anniversary, or the precondition exemption) and yet it gutted the onerous funding mechanisms for this. Yes, they were onerous (like my having to purchase maternity insurance despite the fact that I have no ovaries or womb, and don't swing that way anyway, or that I have to buy dental insurance that I am not allowed to use because it's for "the children"). This is bad stuff, unfair and costly stuff, but it did fund the crappy insurance that the government mandated. Pulling this bilge out is correct, but not keeping the basic plan in place and pulling that out; there is no money for funding. Everyone knew obamacare was going to collapse anyway, and in fact it was designed to do that to clear the way for single payer aka socialized medicine (let's stop playing the liberal's game of hide the meaning through "reframing" the language, can we!)

So along comes Pee Wee Ryan, stat nerd and rampaging Rino, and he guts the funding from an already underfunded bill. Now what? It was going to collapse at some point, and everyone knew who exactly was to blame for that. Oh, the media would have tried to blame the GOP anyway, but the public knew they had resisted the program from the start. But when Ryanocare collapsed it would be entirely the fault of the Republicans - and that is why they couldn't get any Democrats on board with it, even though they knew it was going to collapse. They wanted the GOP to take the fall.

And, in their usual Charlie Brown football kicking style, they eagerly ran toward it. I am surprised at Trump, though, for falling for this. But then, Trump is not really a conservative and he probably actually believed in it.

There were numerous other pitfalls with this; the GOP promised to REPEAL the program and not just rearrange it, for instance, so passing this made them liars. Don't think the public wouldn't have noticed that; it was a large part of why they were given control of the government in the first place.

Oh, I know; it was promised that all the problems would be fixed in "phase II and phase III". Tom Cotton of Arkansas laughed at this notion, saying it would never happen and he is right. There never was going to be real reform done. We were being asked to trust a Republicans Party that has not fulfilled any campaign promises over the last decade. They did not have any right to expect our trust; it has to be earned. Had they passed a clean bill they would have earned it. But this thing was not a clean bill. It is galling because they passed many clean bills in the House while Obama was in office and it didn't matter. Strange how they have weakened since taking power.

Another point about this is that it is vintage GOP negotiating style. Normally in negotiations you demand way more than you think you can get and work your way backward. If all goes well you wind up with more than you actually wanted. Worst case scenario you wind up with your bottom line. The Republicans have this maddening tendency to go for half a loaf and not even bother with trying for the whole thing. They start their negotiations with their bottom line position, and whittle it back to near nothing. This whole Ryanocare was a classic example; they made it plain they were desperate to do this and immediately - any negotiator knows that urgency must be on the opposing side. You have to be prepared to get up and walk away from the table. But the GOP started this with "we've got to do this immediately" which meant the Democrats held all the cards. Instead of passing a clean repeal and forcing the Democrats to vote against it they worked up a bill they thought could be passed, a stinker which really didn't repeal the onerous filthy bog of Obamacare.

It's more akin to European "conservative" parties who don't resist the fundamental principles of government control but simply promise to do it better. This bill would have been a way of accepting the right of government to rule over us and our bodies. Liberals fondest wet dream is socialized medicine, because then the State owns your body and has a right to tell you what you can and cannot do with it. If they are paying they are giving the orders. That is why a repeal was so important here, and the GOP failed. They wanted to preserve the basic principle, the precedent that government has a right to do this.

Talk show host Michael Medved was bleating yesterday about how the failure of this increases the likelihood of our getting "single payer" because Obamacare will fail, and that we should be willing to take half a loaf. He is utterly clueless on this issue; Ryanocare was going to fail in just as spectacular a fashion, and we still could well have gotten socialized medicine. And as for that half loaf, how has that worked out in the past? We've been told to take half a loaf and like it for twenty years or more, and everything has gone backward in that time. In point of fact half a loaf is the fundamental intellectual building block of Marxism, the idea of the Hegelian dialectic, where you present a thesis, which is countered by an antithesis leading to a synthesis. Or to put it simply two steps forward one step back. The Left has perfected this technique, and Medved's half loaf is simply acquiescing to the dialectic progression. There comes a time to take a stand and this was it.

I ask Medved and the other pusillanimous pipsqueaks who wanted compromise here, would they accept half a surgery? If the doctor got them on the slab, cut their chests open and started a double heart valve replacement, would they be satisfied for the doc to only replace one valve and leave the other bad one alone? Of course not, but that is precisely what they are asking us to do here. Would they be content to have a dentist drill out a cavity but not fill it? Would they be thankful if the chef in their favorite restaurant brought out raw food?

Other points against Ryanocare; first, if much of it was going to be removed by "the Director" aka Tom Pryce then a new President can reinstate these provisions as well. They need to be killed in law, not by order. Also, nobody bothered to think about the uncertainty that the multi-pphased scheme engendered in the economy.  Without settling this issue the market had no solid footing, which means people are going to be cautious in terms of investment and expansion of businesses. Ryanocare was going to hurt economic growth.

The American Revolution was fought over one simple principle; the Colonists denied the right of England to tax them, plain and simple, while Parliament was determined to impose some tax, any tax, simply to create a precedent that they had the right to do so. Parliament kept rescinding taxes and creating new ones, ones they hoped the Colonists would accept. Each new tax brought new outrage, because the Colonists were unwilling to allow Britain to establish this premise. THEY weren't willing to accept half a loaf, because they knew that that half loaf would soon be a quarter loaf and before they knew it they would be standing in a bread line, waiting for moldy scraps from their masters. Medved and the other compromisers simply do not grasp this principle.

And another thing; we keep hearing about "the Parliamentarian won't allow it" from the Republicans. We NEVER heard a peep about this advisory position until now. Why? Well, for starters, the current Parliamentarian is Elizabeth MacDonough, a woman appointed by Harry Reid. This is not a permanent position, and Mitch McConnell is supposed to appoint his own as the Parliamentarian is simply an adviser to the Senate Majority Leader. Yet Mitch the (prison) Bitch couldn't be bothered to select a better one than Old MacDonough, who can be expected to shout "ee-i-ee-i-oh!" whenever any conservative motion comes to the floor. Oh, and Mitch has the authority to overrule the Parliamentarian any time he likes. But he doesn't like, because he doesn't really want to rid America of Obamacare. So he and the other Republicans have brought this position to a high prominence, saying they will simply be overruled by her and what can you do? I have never seen a more cowardly and craven bunch in my life.

"Repeal and replace" was a phrase that always set my teeth on edge; it meant simply changing a bad law rather than disposing of it. The conservative revolt in the House is a good thing, a very good thing, because it shows that we are not going to just rubber stamp what the Leadership - a craven leadership more interested in appealing to big money donors and the fake news media - deigns to give us. Today is a day to celebrate.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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