Abortion and the Healthcare Debate

In the last few days the Democrats have made through on their promise to do "whatever it takes" to pass healthcare. They were willing to start an ethics investigation into and drive out a member of their own party who opposed healthcare, and now seem willing to make a possibly unconstitutional rules change to get it through as well.

The backdrop of this Democrat desperation is that all they have to do is pass a bill through a legislative body (The House of Representatives) in which they have a 40 vote majority. If that were such a good and important bill this wouldn't be that hard.

With an impending vote it seems the one person who is doing the most to stand up for the unborn, and get Democrats to vote against the bill is Bart Stupak. Since the current bill does not include the Stupak Amendment, Bart Stupak and a group of 6-12 other Democrats who voted yes last time have committed to vote no on the bill. Confident that he had the votes to stop the bill, Rep. Stupak announced it was dead on arrival when it was first announced that Nancy Pelosi was trying to pass the Senate version of the Healthcare bill.

Since then Rep. Stupak has tried to get the House leadership to include his amendment on this version of the bill. However the leadership is ignoring him and is working to pass the bill without fixing the abortion language. The Democrat laeadership seems ready to ignore the concerns of its pro-life members, and doesn't seem to care about protecting human life.

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

“Throughout this debate, even when the House leaders have acknowledged us, it’s always been in a backhanded way,” he laments. “I’m telling the others to hold firm, and we’ll meet next week, but I’m disappointed in my colleagues who said they’d be with us and now they’re not. It’s almost like some right-to-life members don’t want to be bothered. They just want this over.”

Sadly we have hardly heard a peep about the abortion aspect of the healthcare bill from the Republican leadership recently. There has been a lot of talk about mandates, medicare, and costs (which are all very important), but by ignoring the abortion aspect they are leaving a very important argument against the bill off the table. Hopefully this is not a signal on how the Republicans plan to campaign this year, because if they ignore the abortion issue they will be hurt this fall. Pro-lifers are important activists and voters who will work hard for whoever they believe will protect the unborn, and they should not be ignored by the GOP during this election cycle.

It will be interesting to see how the next couple days turn out. There is currently a vote scheduled for Thursday. However many including the Democrat House Whip say the votes are not there yet. It also appears the Slaughter Rule is not off the table yet.

For an updated whipcount check this out, and please contact your congressman to urge them to vote no.

The Kind of Candidates We Should Not be Recruiting

In this article Patrick Ruffini argues that another front in the war on the establishment is stopping ending the search for self funded candidates. This is a must read article as we prepare for the 2010 election cycle.

An important quote is

The lesson here is that fundraising is not an independent variable. Fundraising is a dependent variable and the independent variable is the message. There does not exist an innate ability to fundraise independent of a strong message -- unless the candidate is fabulously wealthy and can self-fund. And in cases where there might be, all the fundraising in the world cannot overcome a poor message. If a candidate is wealthy or has rich friends, but has no message, the GOP should run -- not walk -- away from that candidate.

Online GOP Tech Summit Needs & Invites You!

Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service: The RNC Transition Team established working groups in six specific issue areas to further refine the ideas put forth at the GOP Tech Summit and to push the conversation to the next level. Ultimately, there will be a Republican user-generated report produced that we'll present to Chairman Steele and his team for their review and implementation as they see fit.

::: We can't do it alone. We need your help. :::
Join the discussion, on how the party can best embrace (and keep motivated) the grassroots and keep the CONSERVATIVE VOICE strong, at the GOP Tech Summit website.

Over the next seven days -- if you have an idea -- please share it. If you have a comment on another idea put forth, dig in. Let us heed the challenge put forth by Chairman Steele and leave no stone unturned. We are listening. I hope you'll be a part of this Revolution.
::: If you join us in this effort; then invite me as a friend :::

Special Elections Round II

Tonight Louisiana residents will go to the polls (again) for the final vote on who will represent Louisiana's 4th congressional district.

The race is between Republican John Fleming (who has a really amazing website btw), and Democrat Paul Carmouche. Sean Oxendine makes the case on The Next Right that this race is an even more important bell weather than the Saxby Chambliss senate race as it is comparable to the string of special elections the GOP lost last spring. Most polls have this race in a dead heat, and while this race is not getting the national attention the Saxby Chambliss senate race recieved, Generation Joshua does have a team of young homeschoolers working on the race. We'll see what happens, and I will post tonight to let y'all know what happens.

Hopefully the GOP can keep winning these special elections.

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Another race to watch tonight is Louisiana's 2nd congressional district. This race is between Republican Joseph Cao, and incumbent congressman William Jefferson. In the general election in November, there was a lot of talk about possibly defeating John Murtha. It appears that tonight there is a chance to defeat William Jefferson.

This is not a bell weather race by any means as it is a solidly Democratic congressional district, defeating William Jefferson would be amazing. It would show that Republicans can win in solidly Democrat congressional districts, and it would demonstrate once again that the people of Louisiana will not tolerate corruption.

Check back in tonight for election results.

Jeff Frederick is still my Chairman

Any time a party loses an election plenty of finger pointing goes on. Within the GOP the most popular fingerpointing game is for the liberals and the establishment in the party to blame the social conservatives and grassroots for the loss. On the national level we have seen this with the ridiculous attacks on Sarah Palin.

On the state level conservatives are witnessing a similar attack as one of Tom Davis' surrogates is pushing for Jeff Frederick to be removed as RPV Chairman. For a fairly comprehensive summary of this discussion, you can take a look at the e-mail that started it all, and then check out this analysis/summary.

Jeff Frederick is a young energetic articulate principled conservative. When he was elected to the House fo Delegates, he was the youngest delegate since Thomas Jefferson. He has been a constant target of the Warner/Kaine machines, but has won on the outskirts of NOVA. While he has not been a perfect chairman, he has been blunt at times about the problems, and stuck to his principles. At the very least he has updated the RPV in a very visible way by giving it a much better website (as opposed to this). I respect admire and trust Jeff Frederick, and I believe he is the man to guide us to success in 2009. I was proud to beable to vote for Jeff Frederick for party chair at the last state convention, and I will continue to support him in any way I can.