Calling Dr. Frankenstein!

IT'S ALIIIIIVEEE!!!

Cornyn is no fool, but he is also in no position to establish Republican policy. The decision to go for total repeal is way above the paygrade of any Republican elected official. It is in the province of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. Pushing for total repeal is in their best financial insterests so they are going to push for total repeal.

I have been reading some right wing sites today. The way they are lurching around I am afraid the tea baggers might get violent. They believe that they are saving America from the Godless Communist, Fascist, homosexual, baby killing others. For them extremism in the defense of their vision of America is no vice. The problem is there are no voices on the other side who are willing or able to help dial back the crazies.

This is starting to look more like 1998 than 1994.

Senator Cornyn, how do you keep the pre-existing conditions exclusion and keep people from not waiting until their sick to buy health insurance? Doesn't that mean you need an individual mandate? And how can you have an individual mandate without subsidies? And how do you have subsidies without a tax increase? Repealing the whole bill makes more sense than trying to keep the just pre-existing conditions exclusion.

Dems have never had any problem when it comes to giving the Republicans enough rope. Tying that rope off and letting them dangle has, generally, escaped them though.

This year the snow melt is early, and the river is rising.

Democrats are filling sandbags.

Republicans are carrying signs that say, "Global Warming is a Fraud!"

"There is non-controversial stuff here like the preexisting conditions exclusion and those sorts of things," the Texas Republican said.

Um, if it's so noncontroversial, how come the Republicans' own health care plan released during the debate didn't include it. (Answer: because it's not possible without a mandate, which thirteen Republican AG's are suing to get rid of). What a liar!

John Cornyn, RINO. The Texas voters need to kick him out and elect a real Republican.

Dennis, if Cornyn had been paying attention to the policy instead of trying to trap Obama he would know the answer. But he wasn't so he doesn't even understand the question.

I'm not so sure, this time, Steve... I was over at the Freeper site checking out the comments on Sunday, and as crazy as they are, there seemed to be quite a few voices who clearly recognized that leaving the GOP was basically suicidal, splitting the right wing vote. So there are certainly voices within the wingnuttiest sites who may be willing to give the GOP some leeway, if their hatred of dems can override their desire for purity.

you have great blogs steve benen, i wish you would appear on Rachel Maddow just as much as Ezra Klein does

Anyone who can speak honestly and work for positive solutions can out poll the Republican party and its base, hands down!

Honest rhetoric and policy proposals over the past year may have helped the Republican party to be in a bit of a better position than dangling over the political dustbin of irrelevancy as we begin Anno Domini 2010.

How do the Republicans plan to take their strategy to their campaigns? By offering to take away health care from the American people?

Good luck with that! -Kevo

Beware poking a stick at the hornets' nest. It's hard to get the little buggers back in once they're out.

And boy has the GOP got the hornets buzzin' mad!

Dear 'Big John': welcome to p*wnd-ville.

Hope you like the scenery!!!

well, the core problem they face is that the haters only constitute 40%, and for every move to the center ("well, of course we don't mean repeal the ban on prexisting conditions exclusion"), they do lose a nut on the right.

this actually is utterly fantastic: almost too much to hope for, and so i'm not going to count on it continuing forever, but this should be lots of fun.

These people are simply out of their minds. They seem to be infected with rabies or something. There is no rational explanation for their behavior. They're acting like two year olds in the grocery store when they didn't get to have animal crackers.

And I agree with Kevo. There is very little downside for the Dems. But they have to sell it as a great thing and not be defensive when the r's attack.

This guy is a F***ing idiot. see posts above. How do you cherry pick? Oh I know. You do it the republican way. Fight wars that you don't pay for; give tax breaks w/o cuts to spending; create new benefits w/o paying for them, etc....

if the right wing is in disarry, attack attack attack! Pass the bils you need. Make these sorry bastards run after 10 different fights at once. that would be fun to watch, in a sick sort of way ...

Re: Ron Byers @ 4:49 - On a brick that broke the window of a Democratic headquarters, the Goldwater quote was scribbled. Remember, Barry suggested extremism was worth it if liberty was perserved: "Extremism in defense of liberty is a virtue."

Barry and his wingnut base didn't realize that extremism in the defense of liberty is anarchy which is antithetical to a civil democratic society!

The Republican and Teabagger parties may be fearing fascism, communism, and socialism, but common, decent Americans are a fearing the mobocracy potentially coming ashore in the longboats of Teabagging social violence! -Kevo

Here's what I hope the Republicans use as their mantra for the 2010 elections:

"When we repeal the health care reform bill, we'll be greeted as liberators!"

That would be awesome!

I don't get it. How do you do a partial repeal? Cornyn wants to keep protection for those with pre-existing conditions. But to make that possible, you need mandates. Then of course if you're going to require people to buy insurance, you need to support those who are poor, and otherwise protect consumers from gouging. And bang, there's most of the bill right there. You can tinker at the edges I guess; indeed that's what the reconciliation bill is for which they oppose, but aside from that I don't know how you partially repeal HCR.

Cornyn can say what he wants - if the GOP tries to repeal just the mandate/subsidy part of HCR, but not the pre-existing condition part... the insurers will knock them into next week. They can't afford to take on a bunch of sick customers without any new healthy customers to offset them.

Cornyn is no fool

You're incorrect; he is an imbecile.

The other part of the trap isn't electoral. if the GOP thinks they can tell the voters, "oh sure, we'll just require insurance companies to always cover you" then they would guarantee a strongly negative response from the insurance companies. And why not? I hate insurance companies, but even I can see that that is bad public policy. Anyone who is thinking about it sees that it won't work.

I never thought much of the Chamber of Commerce, but at least they're smarter than these GOP Senators. The GOP is so used to sending out press releases with terrorists & tax cuts in it, then cashing their checks from their corporate overlords that now they really can't find their way around a real policy area.

Horse is out of the barn, Big Bad John.

Hold on a minute! GIVE THE GOP SOME CREDIT HERE!

The "repeal trap" is not of the Dems making. The GOP made it all by themselves.

You know that adage about when the enemy is shooting itself, just get out of the way?

OK, Dems can help "egg them on", but the GOP built this trap, from the ground up, all by themselves!

How do you cherry pick? Oh I know. You do it the republican way. Fight wars that you don't pay for; give tax breaks w/o cuts to spending; create new benefits w/o paying for them, etc....

Exactly. Fight to remove all the taxes part of the bill. You know, like, being reckless spenders like they were 2000-2006.

Then it will be up to the big bad Dems to be the responsible adults in the room (again) to say: we need these taxes to pay for the programs.

They drank their own kool-aid. We tried to warn them but they did it anyway.

SHORT MINDED CONSERVATIVES!

It's amazing how you ignorant conservatives DRINK the democratic kool aid and now are attacking one of the leaders who fought tooth and nail against this bill.

The dems will win in 2010 if you don't wake up!!!

What Cornyn actually said, "What the GOP will work to repeal, Cornyn explained, are provisions that result in "tax increases on middle class families," language that forced "an increase in the premium costs for people who have insurance now" and the "cuts to Medicare" included in the legislation. "

STOP FIGHTING YOU SHORT MINDED PEOPLE! THE DEMS STARTED THE ANTI-2010 RHETORIC SO THEY CAN WIN IN NOVEMBER THE DAY THE BILL PASSES, AND YOUR SO SLOW YOU'RE FALLING FOR IT!!

It appears that the GOP implosion that we all expected to happen around this time last year has merely been delayed a year. The teapartiers are going to demand Beck-style extremism and if they don't get it they're going to turn on the GOP.

See Mr. Frum's recent accounts of what this means for the Republicans and also the relationship between the Republicans and Fox News. He pretty much calls it when he says that the Republican leadership committed suicide by giving so much power to the wing nuts. And their belief that Fox News was working for them made them totally at the mercy of their most unhinged wing when it came to trying to do anything rational. Fox News makes its living by stirring up the weirdoes and that isn't always what the Republicans need.

Now that they've done it to the point that the unhinged contingent won't accept anything less than complete repeal, Cornyn and the rest of the Republican leadership are kind of stuck. It's sort of like what happens when you depend on mercenaries to do your fighting for you. There comes the time when the mercenaries want to take over. It happened to the Ottoman Empire and the Gulf Cartel. It is happening to the Republican party.

It cracks me up to see Republican lawmakers saying that nobody disputes we need healthcare reform, or that they all agree with eliminating pre-existing conditions. Besides the point made above that their own so-called plan says nothing about pre-existing conditions, if these things are so non-controversial, where the hell were they for eight years, including six when they controlled every branch of government?

BrandonM - assuming you're not nuts, you're welcome to talk sense to your party. They've really gone off the deep end.

You repeated some talking points that Cornyn said about the middle class that just aren't true. Consider trying out this calculator and see what the impact of HRC would be on you, and on people you know:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/what-health-bill-means-for-you/?nav=most_emailed

If you're like me, you have friends and family that are out of work, despite months or even years of trying. This bill will really help, once all parts of it are active.

If you keep the no pre-existing condition reform and chuck the mandate, you bring the insurers down on your heads. The two are bound up if you want to control costs.

Interesting.

We see a critical Achilles' heel of conservatism appear!

George Bush's Black and White world inevitably needs to cause this situation.

"You're for us, or you're against us"
"There's such a thing as good and evil"
"We win, they lose"

Rush O' Hannity's masses gravitate to the easily digestible pablum of toggle-switch politics, but the moment nuance is needed for a partial repeal because completeness may result in a GOP bloodbath at the polls....

Too late. Like lemmings off the cliff, retreat is not currently an option.

Cornyn can give it up until he's convinced his peeps that acknowledging the existence of shades of gray is the only path back to sanity and eventual success.

I agree. Nice try, John.

In the Uk will it be better to give food to birds most of year round? If so are we supposed to change the feed with the changing seasons? Cheers for the posts and birds rock