28 thoughts on “The Tea Party”

  1. Trump, the Tea Party and we the people all have the same enemies.

    Those enemies are unable to hide their true nature. The only question is: do we continue to fight ourselves and chase squirrels or do we fight the enemy?

    Lincoln was kind of an ugly bastard, but he was OUR ugly bastard.

  2. “Guess we need to primary some of them next year.”

    We’ve known that for years: RINO’s have to be turned out of office.

    I had zero expectation that the GOP was going to repeal and replace Obama-cide. If they were serious about that they would have had the plan and the votes ready by January 20th. They’ve had years to work this out. I wonder what happened to Tom Price’s plan?

    We kept hearing how they could do nothing because they had only 1/2 of the House…..then the House and Senate – still not enough…then the House, Senate and the White House.

    Still can’t do it.

    That’s because they never intended to do it.

    They did not disappoint me.

    Milton Freidman said you can’t wait for the right people to appear so that they will do the right thing. You have to get the wrong people to do the right thing.

    It seems to me that the tack to take would be to not eliminate Obamacide but just make it one choice of many and allow it to wither on the vine. Congress is too stupid to do that.

    Also the Dems play for blood. They trot out one sob story after another to cow and coerce their opponents. GOP should have been doing this for the last 8 years.

    1. The problem you will have is that RINO’s are actually the majority of the party, certainly of the elected officials and maybe even the rank and file. Too few people will actually reward small government, because of decades of continued propaganda.

      To elect small government types, small government itself must be sold to the masses. Not “Obamacare bad!” but “Competing doctors and direct payment great!”

      1. To elect small government types, small government itself must be sold to the masses.

        We are in a strange place where Republicans, and Americans in general, don’t understand and can’t communicate the benefits of capitalism over government control, graft and cronyism.

      1. “Let’s keep some perspective here, eh? It was 3 Republicans.”

        Keep in mind that many will vote one way (yes) if they know the thing will ultimately get voted down – to save their political ass.

        Also, Louis Gomert claims that the GOP of one house (say the House) will call the GOP of the other house (Senate) and say they will only pass a bill if the other house can assure them that they WON’T pass the bill.

        They’ve been trading this deal back and forth for a long time, according to Gomert.

    2. At the very core of the Abomination known as ACA is a mandate for coverage providers to cover pre-existing conditions. Drop that and the whole purpose of the tyranny collapses. Drop just the provisions that allow coverage providers to pass on costs to unwilling customers and there will be no more private sector coverage providers.

  3. Senator Mc Cain voted against the skinny repeal. Guess he gets to have his “Cadillac Insurance Policy” while the rest of us get nothing. He was applauded by the Dems though. That’s important.

    What a betrayal.

    1. The fact that the entire Congress exempted themselves from Obamacide tells you all you need to know about:

      1) What they really think of Obamacide (it sucks)

      2) What they really think about you (you suck and they don’t give one good goddam about you)

      3) What it is that’s REALLY important to them (enhancing their rice bowls).

    2. He has been such a disappointment. Ever since he and his staff turned on Palin, he has been going down hill.

    3. He can’t betray what never had his allegiance. He voted against small government, liberty, and fiscal sanity.

      There is no betrayal there.

  4. The US Senate is the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, as senators keep telling us. Who are you to disagree?

  5. Note the subtle difference between Democrats and Republicans. The Obamacare bill was an awful hodge-podge, and everyone on their side hated it, and various ones had various pieces that were completely unacceptable to them. But as Nate Silver said at the time, [rough quote from memory] “This bill transfers $900 billion dollars to poor people – isn’t there something we can work out?” And they did. Because when push came to shove, they would take any health care bill at all over no health care bill. Not one Democrat was willing to vote otherwise.
    I had honestly thought that the Republican Party felt the same way about Obamacare, in reverse. I guess not all of them.

  6. I’m disappointed that they didn’t simply repeal, and greatly disappointed that in all this time they haven’t come up with an acceptable replacement, if that’s what they’d prefer. As far as “skinny”, that was just a gimmick. If the Senate can’t come up a single version of the bill that they’d accept on their own, what was the point of going to conference?

    Advancing the process might have pleased the White House, but at this point I don’t think many Senators much care if they please the President or not. I see reports that his strong-arm tactics against reluctant Senators backfired, with one Senator quoted as saying that “The president scares no one in the Senate, not even the pages.” (Though the remark was made “on the condition of anonymity because he wanted to preserve his relationship with Mr. Trump”.)

    So, does this mean that Mr. Price is fired, or did the President not add “scout’s honor” to that threat?

    More seriously, regarding Mr. Trump, I had to remind myself what he campaigned on. It was:
    1. “Insurance for everybody”
    2. “No cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid”
    3. “We don’t want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance”
    4. “Nobody will be worse off financially”
    5. “Get rid of the artificial lines around the states”
    6. “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now”

    But the Trump campaign never put out a white paper on the subject, did they?

    I’ve not been paying much attention to this process, but did the White House ever develop and push a replacement plan of their own, or did they just back whatever plan either house seemed willing to vote for in order to put a mark in the “win” column?

    1. Trump never cared about the policy, or even gave it any thought (“No one knew that health care was so complicated”). He just wanted a photo op of himself signing something.

  7. Congress is all about evolution, not revolution. They’re a bunch of lawyers. They naturally lean toward building on precedent.

    What we really need is for the executive to take the ball, come up with a market based plan, and push it through. Will Trump do it? I think he might, eventually. I certainly hope so. It is, after all, the American way:

    “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” – Winston Churchill

  8. My late ex-father-in-law died of glioblastoma multiforme, the type of brain cancer McCain has. A month before his diagnosis, I was having a conversation with him when he suddenly appeared to babble gibberish. But his voice was so deep, and I had trouble hearing in those registers, that I thought I had just scrambled his words. Not so. From his diagnosis to his death was another 30 days.

    As much as I dislike McCain, I’m sorry to see him meet this kind of end. He won’t be around for reelection.

    1. Sorry to hear of your loss. That’s not a particularly good way to go, but then, it’s better than some.

      But, I wouldn’t be too sure, yet. In the last several years, I have had a few friends and family members that I thought were goners. But, medical science has made great strides lately, and they are still here.

  9. Imagine science were to figure out how to keep the rich alive?

    Elections would become a thing of the past.

  10. Did McCain vote the way he did because he is a closet Democrat or because he was upset Trump made a joke, that few remember, about him once during the election in response to a criticism of Trump that no one remembers?

    And why do some think that standing up for Planned Parenthood means that the government has to fund their business? We would be a lot closer to a perfect world when there isn’t enough business for an abortion clinic to keep its doors open.

    1. It’s because the senate GOP overall wanted the bill to fail, but didn’t want to be held responsible for it failing. So they needed the minimum number of senators to vote against it. McCain was brought back because he’s not going to be up for reelection, as his chance of surviving to the next election is low — the perfect sacrifice.

      The interesting dynamic now is Trump saying he’s going to jettison the Republicans (thus the staff changes). This is a route to impeachment and conviction when the house/senate Republicans decide he is no longer useful. Trump might imagine he can cut some sort of deal with the Democrats but I can’t imagine many (or even any) of them would try that, given the level of rage against Trump among their voters.

      1. “This is a route to impeachment and conviction when the house/senate Republicans decide he is no longer useful.”

        And then what?

        It would prove to even the densest voters that there’s only one party in DC, and voting achieves nothing.

        That’s the fast track to civil war.

  11. Last night on the bus home I encountered one of the walking braindead that believes the TEA party is founded on hatred and racism. We have a lot of propaganda to overcome.

    1. Its the age old problem, when did you stop being a racist?

      Nothing you can do will ever stop the accusation, even if you are not white.

      The Democrats use this strategy all the time for many issues and its been very effective against Trump. The strategy is the accusation and it has nothing to do with any objective truth.

  12. “It was another victory for the statists.” Sad but true but in politics most victories are. I think it was Jefferson who pointed out that if you look over history, in almost any period of human history you choose, statism is in the ascendant and liberty is on the defensive. If there is an afterlife, and a libertarian Valhalla, I’m sure the shades of Nock, Mencken and Garet Garrett are laughing and shouting down to us, “We WARNED you, you schmucks!”

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