GOP says No to Reagan

Conservative RNC member James Bopp Jr. is circulating a draft resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support if they wish to have party backing. The resolution calls on the Republican National Committee to end funding and endorsements for any candidate who deviates from three or more of the positions. RNC chairman Michael Steele will now have to choose a side between those who would expand the party ideologically and those more concerned with conservative purity at the next RNC meeting in January.

So why just 10 positions to abide by? And why only two are allowed to be broken before being booted from the party? Because as the resolution states, “WHEREAS, President Ronald Reagan believed, as a result, that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent.” Unfortunately, of the 10 positions listed Ronald Reagan completely failed on more than half of them.

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
Reagan = FAIL

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
Reagan = FAIL

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
Reagan = FAIL

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
Reagan = FAIL

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
Reagan = FAIL

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership;
Reagan = FAIL

And to sum it all up the resolution states: “RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy positions of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee; and be further.”

So, good bye Ronald Reagan! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! It really looks like the GOP learned the wrong lesson last Nov. 3rd.

What the Fox!?

“The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological… what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party.”

“Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.”

“[Fox is] widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party: take their talking points and put them on the air, take their opposition research and put it on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news organization like CNN is.”

Well, there you go. That’s the extent of the comments from the White House. Where does Anita Dunn say that the White House is planning to take Fox News off the air? Was it when she said that the President will go on the network again because he likes to engage with ideological opponents?

Can you find anywhere in Anita Dunn’s comments where she talked about how the white house was paying liberal editorial writers to write favorable opinion pieces about White House policy positions, like how the Bush White House paid Armstrong Williams and others to trump up his No-Child Left Behind education bill?

Where in Anita Dunn’s comments does she talk about about how the White House was paying fake news reporters and gay escorts to ask soft ball questions during daily White House Briefings and Press Conferences, like how the Bush White house paid Jeff Gannon, employed by the “just-for-Jeff-Gannon’s-credentials” fake virtual news agency Talon news, which of course no longer exists.

And does anyone remember a Bush Press Secretary named Tony Snow? Has that name been erased from everyone’s memory over there at Fox News? Well, aside from the fact Tony Snow has since passed away from cancer and how forgetting his name would fall in line with Fox New’s ideological stance on health care, because obviously Tony Snow didn’t pull himself up by his own bootstraps enough, Tony Snow was the host of “Fox News Sunday” and substitute fill-in for Bill O’Reilly’s radio show before the Bush White House snapped him up to be the White House Press Secretary in April 2006. Just curious, did anyone hear Anita Dunn mention when the White House would be hiring liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to be Obama’s new White House Press Secretary?

Did anyone notice if Anita Dunn mentioned that the White House would be spending millions to organize and facilitate massive protests across the nation in protest of Fox News? Not that Fox News would ever spend millions organizing nation-wide astro-turf tea party protests against paying taxes at a rate still remaining since the last president before Obama passed them into law, which were even at a lower tax rate than what taxes were under Reagan. Except that’s exactly what they did.

Fox News frequently aired segments encouraging viewers to get involved with “tea party” protests across the country on their channel. They provided attendance numbers, protest dates, locations and website URLs. Fox News’s own website had also posted information and publicity material for protests. Fox News hosts repeatedly encouraged viewers to join them at several April 15 protests that they were attending and covering. In addition, Fox News has also aired numerous interviews with protest organizers in the build up to the protests. No, Anita Dunn didn’t mention anything quite at that level, although she did say the White House viewed Fox News as the political arm of the Republican party. Huh.

So, please Fox News cry babies, STFU! You made your bed and now its time to go sleep in it. Trying to call out the White House for calling you what you are, and saying they are fine with that, but nevertheless it is what it is, just drips with hypocrisy. Calling the President Stalin and Chairman Mao is beyond ridiculous, especially since it took the Bush White House “forever” to finally completely blacklist MSNBC according to Fox News hosts during the last 2 years of the Bush presidency.

In defense, Fox News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente struck back at the White House after Dunn’s remark saying, “It’s astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self-serving on their part.” Fox went on to define its news hours as 9am-4pm & 6-8pm, of course time slots which exclude Cavuto, O’Reilly, Fox & Friends crew, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, and Sean Hannity from the news category and leave a bunch of people nobody’s ever heard of.

But if the above examples aren’t enough for you then I’ll let Jon Stewart further explore the hypocrisy of Fox News’s inability to call the kettle black. To be fair, Stewart even skewers the White House as well, for not claiming MSNBC is also biased.

Without regulation on the Health Insurance companies and without the Public-Option available to the public, what is there to stop these greedy corporations from making hand over fist profits with the blood of hard working Americans? Thankfully some people are coming around and seeing the light, even on the Fox Right Wing News channel:

And just last month, after months of calling the Public-Option “socialist government run health care”, Poppa Bear himself, Bill O’Reilly came out in favor of the Public-Option on his show because he wants “hard working Americans to have an option.”

[Transcript (edited):]

The Republicans who oppose health care reform and the conservative Democrats who oppose a public option have deeply principled, philosophical objections to the concept of government insurance—except when insurance companies benefit from it.

The big arguments against the public option have been these: that the government is incapable of running an insurance plan, that the free-market provides consumers with better choices, that socialized insurance will have unfair advantages. But as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston recently reported, these arguments do not stop some of the big opponents of socialized insurance for voting for socialized insurance when that insurance is not for the well being of people, but for the well being of property.

After the president gave his national speech for health care reform, Louisiana Congressman Charles Boustany gave the Republican Party rebuttal targeting the public option, which Boustany incorrectly calls “government-run health care,” when he said, “Replacing your family‘s current health care with government-run health care is not the answer.  In fact, it will make health care much more expensive.”

Some blue dog House Democrats led by Stephanie Herseth Sandlin also oppose a public option.  And when the Senate Finance Committee voted against including the option in its version of health care reform, Republicans were joined by a handful of Democrats including the committee chair, Max Baucus, who crafted the bill after conferring for weeks with the so-called “Gang of Six“: fellow Democrats Jeff Bingaman and Kent Conrad, Republicans Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi and Olympia Snowe.  The entire gang of six votes—casts their votes against the public option on Tuesday.

But each of them voted just last year in support of government-run insurance, that insurance however protects property.  It is the National Flood Insurance Program created in 1968, because the free market decided it could not make money on that unpredictable risk called flooding.  Government-run flood insurance is sold through private insurance companies but it is backed by the government and the government assumes all risk.  Unlike the public option which relies on customer premiums, government flood insurance gets a subsidy—also known as a handout—from the government and it is mandatory for some people.

So given all the shouting over a public option, who could vote for mandatory taxpayer subsidized, anti-free market socialized flood insurance run by government bureaucrats?  Every single politician mentioned above and most of the rest of Congress. Charles Boustany of Louisiana, along with 44 other Republicans in the House on September 27, 2007, as well as the entire “Gang of Six”, along with 41 Senate Republicans on May 13, 2008, voted yea on the Commission on Natural Catastrophe Risk Management and Insurance Act of 2008. Karl Max applauded.

The entire “gang of six” on May 13 last year voting yea on the same act, quote, “to restore the solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program,” but also to expand socialized insurance to other property damage, quote, “to make available multi-peril coverage for damage resulting from windstorms and floods, and for other purposes.”

In the Senate where the public option is less popular than in the House, 92 senators voted to expand socialized property insurance. Consider the communist states that get the biggest handouts from socialized property insurance.  North Carolina, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, and the top socialized property insurance welfare state in the nation, “The People‘s Republic of Texas.” People‘s republic? Where 682,000 property owners have their handout for socialized property insurance, scooping up $1.5 billion in claims last year alone.

Of course, it‘s not that some politicians don‘t care about the health of all Americans as much as they care about the wealth of those Americans who can‘t afford waterfront property. There is perhaps a less callous explanation: greed. It can‘t be principled because mandatory subsidized socialized property insurance is even more socialist than is the public option.

Preexisting conditions? No problem. You can get flood insurance even if you‘ve already been flooded, even if you‘ve chosen to live in a high-risk area, you can even get flood insurance after the diagnosis is in, even if you know there‘s a big rainfall or hurricane coming. But what really matters to Congress is that insurance companies oppose the public option but they love mandatory socialized government-run property insurance.

According to the New York Times, Americas pay about $2.3 billion in flood premiums every year.  Insurance companies get almost $1 billion out of that, almost half of it just for selling the policies, without a single dollar of their own at risk. Congressional auditors found that private insurance companies make $327 million a year above their expenses.

So, thanks to the politicians who oppose the public option for people, we already have socialized government health care plans for the health of the insurance companies.

Opponents of the Public Option, just so long as I’m clear: Socialism that helps people: bad. Socialism that helps property: good. Have you no decency?

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