Why Newt Gingrich Should not be President

Newt Gingrich wants to work with Nancy Pelosi to solve climate change. Why are we still thinking about him for president?

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.

President Obama’s “Sarcastic Summit”

Today, the President held his "Healthcare Summit" at the White House, inviting Republicans and Democrats to come to the table for discussion on a "bi-partisan" solution to healthcare. However, we are now seeing that the President's pledge to hear both sides of the isle has again not come to fruition. A "talk clock" was kept by GOP aids and they timed the President speaking for 119 minutes – that's 9 minutes more than the 110 minutes Republicans used. The Democrats consumed 114 minutes, giving them a total of 233 minutes.

As the Washington Times puts it –

From the beginning, no one could agree on anything, even how much time each side had used. When a miffed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pointed out early on that Democrats had controlled 52 minutes to Republicans' 24, Mr. Obama jumped in to dispute even that.

"I don't think that's quite right," he said.

Sarcastic count #1.

With a twinkle in his eye, he added: "You're right, there was an imbalance on
the opening statements because - I'm the president." Half the room laughed. "I
didn't count my time in terms of dividing it evenly."

Sarcastic count #2.

Each time a Republican sought to break in to rebut a point made by the president or a fellow Democrat, Mr. Obama looked a bit frustrated and made clear who was in
charge of the bipartisan discussion.

"Let me just finish, Lamar," he said during his rebuttal to the senator's opening
statement. "No, no, no, no. Let me - and this is an example of where we've got to get our facts straight," he said when Mr. Alexander sought to clarify a point.

Sarcastic count #3.

The bitterness that underlies the contentious health care reform debate burst to the surface fairly quickly, when Sen. John McCain, who lost to Mr. Obama in the 2008 election, lectured the president about what he called a backdoor process to produce the Senate bill.

"John, can I just say -" Mr. Obama interrupted.

"Can I just finish, please?" Mr. McCain said tersely before continuing, refusing to yield the floor.

"Both of us during the campaign promised change in Washington," Mr. McCain said. "In fact, eight times [as a candidate] you said that negotiations on health care
reform would be broadcast on C-SPAN cameras. I'm glad that more than a year
later they are, here. Unfortunately, this product was not produced in that
fashion; it was produced behind closed doors."

Clearly irritated, Mr. Obama furiously flipped through the pages in a briefing book in front of him as Mr. McCain spoke. When he finished, the president teed off on his former adversary.

"Look, let me just make this point, John, because we are not campaigning anymore. The election's over," he said, staring at the Arizona Republican.

"I'm reminded of that every day," Mr. McCain shot back with a tight smile, adding
that despite that fact, "the American people care about what we did and how we
did it."

Mr. Obama didn't smile as he continued to scold the senator. "We can have a debate about process or we can have a debate about how we're actually going to help the American people at this point. And I think that the latter debate is the one that they care about a little bit more."

Annnd the icing on the cake – Sarcastic count #4.

The president also took a swipe at Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, who sat behind a 3-foot stack of papers - a copy of the legislation produced by the Senate.

"Lemme just guess: That's the 2,400-page health bill," he said, his voice
dripping with sarcasm. "When we do props like this, you know, stack it up, and you repeat 2,400 pages, et cetera, you know, the truth of the matter is that health care is very complicated. And we can try to pretend that it's not, but it is."

Let me just add that Mr. President wasn't the only one playing coy today. Nanci Pelosi pulled it off awfully well –

In hour six, a moment occurred that summed up the bipartisan spirit that existed in the room. Listing the problems with the Senate bill, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner concluded: "I could go on and on and on."

"You have," Mrs. Pelosi said with a tight smile.

Fimian Outraises Connolly by 100k

A quick glance at 3^rd quarter fundraising reports filed with the Federal Election Commission Thursday shows that entrepreneur and GOP candidate Keith Fimian out-raised Democrat Rep. Gerry Connolly by over $100,000 in the first three months of his candidacy.

Fimian raised $233,832 in total contributions and $286,332 in total receipts. Connolly raised $124,726 in total contributions and $176,736 in total receipts.

With over a quarter-million dollars on hand after just one fundraising quarter, Fimian has proved that he is once again poised to run a strong race against Connolly. But this time, Connolly will have to take responsibility for the lockstep liberal record he’s compiled in Congress, voting with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time according to the Washington Post.

A recent Post poll found that Northern Virginians disapprove of Pelosi’s leadership by a 13-point margin: “In Virginia's suburbs outside the capital, Pelosi wins support from 42 percent of the voters, better than her national average a few months ago, while 55 percent disapprove.” (Paul Kane,“Unpopular in Virginia, Pelosi becoming a campaign target,” Washington Post “Capitol Briefing,” 10/13/09)

When you combine this information with other fundraising successes by people like Ken Cuccinelli, and Jay McConville it will once again be a good time to be a Republican. Not only that, imagine having a conservative in Tom Davis's old seat. That should make every conservative's heart happy.