Like wolves on a fresh killed deer, the liberals keep tearing up Democrats over Representative Stupak’s amendment, which forces pro-abortion Dems to vote for pro-life protections for the innocents.

This has sites like FireDogLake completely bent:

“Is there anyone who did not see this coming, besides the over hundred Democrats in the House who call themselves pro-choice? Ben Nelson (D-NE) is now demanding the Senate also include the Stupak amendment language. Did anyone really think the Senate’s conservative Democrats would let any part of the House bill be to the right of the Senate? If Nelson gets his way (and when hasn’t Nelson gotten his way this year?), so much for “don’t worry, Obama will fix it in conference.”

From Politico,

“Senator Nelson is strongly pro-life and was pleased the Stupak amendment passed with such strong support,” Thompson said in a statement. “He believes that no federal money—including subsidies or tax credits–should be used to buy insurance coverage for abortion. This is a very important issue to Senator Nelson and it is highly unlikely he would support a bill that doesn’t clearly prohibit federal dollars from going to abortion.”

“It is a good thing NARAL and Planned Parenthood did not put up a fight before the Stupak amendment was added to the House bill. It is always so much easier to push things to the left in the Senate. . . .

But NARAL and Planned Parenthood got rolled by Speaker Pelosi, and now pro-abortion Senators will be forced to make the same choice pro-abortion House Dems did, but this time, the NARALs and Planned Parenthoods of the world can’t just roll over and play dead, like they did for their pal the Speaker.

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First, let me apologize to RedState readers for taking so long to write and post this overdue piece, the time I allocated to write this was the same time the site was down for maintenance over the weekend.

Regardless, my predictions of winning the House floor vote were wrong.

Simply put, the pro-lfe amendment by Rep. Stupak moved enough Dems into the yes category — but the price paid by Speaker Pelosi was to throw the pro-abortion groups under the bus — and there is a new, titanium strong pro-life baseline consensus on public funding or facilitating the killing of innocent babies: the US House is at a !@#&!$&# NO on that.

Had Rep. Stupak’s amendment failed, the House bill would have failed.

No doubt, and the shock of seeing 64 Dem votes for Rep. Stupak’s don’t use public money to kill the innocents was a Maxell moment for both the Democratic and Republican House Leadership. No one predicted that high a Yes Dem vote.

The desperate position the Speaker must have been in to have to accept the Stupak amendment should not be understated. She and her pro-abortion pals understand that Stupak was a huge step down the path of America becoming a pro-life nation. They have imposed upon themselves and their ilk a negative precedent which cannot be undone.

Dropping the Stupak amendment in conference, should the bill pass the Senate, which I doubt — will mean the conference report will fail on the House floor.

Just think of the desperation of the Speaker, to be FORCED to accept this political price. She pivoted on abortion, and decided the Stupak amendment was worth the price to pass the bill.

For the Jamestown Kool-aid brigade of Dems who voted with the Speaker who are from Red States — you will die a hard and agonizing political death of your own making. Whatever rationale you used to vote for this politically and fiscally toxic bill $3 Trillion spending ObamaCare bill — you are wrong and you are TOAST. (Here is the Congressional Budget Office letter on the $3 Trillion in spending number.)

Most Accurate RedStater

One RedStater who was consistent and accurate on the House vote outcome in their comments on my blogs should be “called-out,” to use the President’s term:

Most accurate: bk. I really appreciate (just for the record) those who disagree with my posts and predictions, and am recognizing bk here for his or her insight and accuracy.

In fact, bk, when I wrote the Today’s House Vote, by the Numbers, the implications of the Stupak amendment and deal were simply not part of that post’s calculation, as you immediately both understood and pointed out.

Thank you for all the dissident commentators, as one myself, I appreciate disagreement with my posts.

The Speaker of the House and the President have two options right now: hold and lose the vote in the House, or wait and vote after the Senate.

By my own count the Speaker and the President are light at least ten votes — and could be light as many as twenty three — depending on the dynamic on the House floor.

The problem is that some yes votes could get changed to no as the loss becomes apparent — why take a beating for a tough vote when the thing is going down?

Members of Congress will not take a beating, just for the sake of taking a beating. They will switch votes, and that is how you get to the fifty to fifty-five House Dems voting no.

The smart play for the Speaker is to don the robes of Mother Protector — I will save my House Members from Walking the Plank — we are waiting for the Senate to vote first. That way her House Members are protected against the bill dying in the Senate, without having taken a tough vote.

As one Senate Dem lobbyist told me yesterday, “Reid can get on the bill, he just can’t get off.” Translating from Washington-speak: Senator Reid can get past the filibuster of the motion to proceed, he just cannot end the filibuster against the bill itself. It is like Senator Reid’s own version of Hotel California hell — he can check in but he can never leave.

This is why the smart play for the Speaker and the White House is to punt. And Harry Reid’s offense takes the field.

Reid then takes the blame if he can’t get into the end zone. The Speaker merely points out the obvious: I was acting in the best political interest of my members. Why should we take tough votes on Medicare cuts, guns, immigration, abortion, taxes, spending, mandates (government control) and watch the Senate fail? (Again.)

But the continued forever quest for the holy-health care grail is making her look like Captain Ahab and the search for the Great White Whale — which in the end he found — it killed him, his ship and all but one of his crew.

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The totals below, I am told by the Heritage Foundation, do NOT include the $250 billion extra spending on Medicare to buy off the American Medical Association for their support of the U.S. House bill.

The Democratic House Leadership has completely lost touch with fiscal reality.

The following is a cut and paste of a media statement by the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Gregg (R-NH):

Senator Gregg: Updated CBO Estimate of House Bill Pulls Back the Curtain on Majority’s Intent to Grow Government by $3 Trillion

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee today commented on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) more detailed cost estimate of the manager’s amendment to the House health reform bill.

Senator Gregg stated, “The CBO estimate released last night finally sheds light on the smoke and mirrors game the majority has been playing with the cost of their health care reform proposal. Over the first 10 years, this legislation builds in gross new spending of $1.7 trillion – and most of the new spending doesn’t even start until 2014. Once that spending is fully phased in, the House Democratic bill rings up at more than $3 trillion over ten years.

“Additionally, this bill cuts critical Medicare and Medicaid funding by $628 billion, accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion in tax and fee increases and will explode the scope of government by putting the nation’s health care system in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The $3 trillion price tag defies common sense – we simply cannot add all this new spending to the government rolls and claim to control the deficit.

“If we continue to pile more and more debt on the next generation, they will never be able to get out from under it. The health care system needs reform, but this massive expansion of government, financed by our children and grandchildren, is the wrong way to proceed.”

They could have saved themselves, but instead, they followed a tortured inside-the-beltway logic that will be lost on the likely voter — I voted for it, to improve it. Uh-huh.

Did members cut spending? End funding of abortion? Enforce the prohibition against illegal immigrants getting the new health care benefit? Cut the $759 billion in new taxes? Curtail the gun health care database? Stop the Medicare cuts? No, oh. I see.

Sounds a whole lot like that famous line, “I voted for it, right before I voted against it.”

Blue Dogs and other Democratic Members of Congress are deluding themselves if they think they can state publicly they voted yes, to improve it. Or that a conference with the White House, the Senate and the House will produce a bill closer to the U.S. Senate’s version.

Instead, they are looking hard for excuses to do the wrong thing.

And if they are looking to end the unending political pain of the Speaker’s health care politics — then the way to end it is to end the bill, and vote no.

Otherwise, they will have to defend their vote in their election, and vote again on the Conference Report — if the bill makes it through the Senate, a very dubious proposition.

Instead, they will be walking the plank, the bill then dies in the Senate — and many of their number will then die in November, 2010.

While the nation is going through the worst recession in modern history, our dollar is deflating because of government debt and we are electronically printing a trillion dollars; unemployment is at 10.2%, let’s tax the American people $752 billion (three quarters of a trillion dollars) and create a new entitlement and spend $1.8 trillion on something less than one in five Americans think is their top concern: health care. Three-quarters of likely voters believe the plan will force employers to give up providing insurance, shredding the “if you like it you can keep it promise.”

All while the American public overwhelmingly oppose the plan, and for triple political pain points, we can have the biggest votes on abortion, immigration, taxes, guns, the public option, Medicare cuts, massive spending and government control all rolled up in one vote, days after special elections that saw Independent voters run like scaled cats, screaming from the Democrats.

And at the same time as the President’s approval rating among likely voters glides ever downward..

Genius, isn’t it? And rational too.

In every election-changing close vote on legislation that passes in the U.S. House, there are two or three U.S. House Members who switch their vote at the last minute.

Usually, these are newbie House members, freshmen or sophomores who succumb to pressure from their leadership. They forget their own districts, and what they need to do to keep their jobs.

Thus, we are reminded of the case of Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-PA) who famously switched her vote to give then President Clinton his tax increase.

It was her vote that passed the bill.

The vote by Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-PA) was an expensive one: she lost the following year.

Here is how Wikepedia describes what happened:

“After defeating Republican Jon D. Fox in a close contest, she became a member of the 103rd Congress. However, she was not re-elected. Losing in 1994 to her 1992 opponent, she was one of 34 Democratic incumbents who were defeated in the Republican Revolution. Her defeat was blamed on her vote for President Bill Clinton’s controversial 1993 budget, for which she was the deciding vote. After the vote, Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pennsylvania) reportedly mocked her, jumping up and down and said “Goodbye, Marjorie” alluding to the fact that her deciding vote would cost her the seat.”

You can bet that any Democratic House member(s) who switches their vote to give Speaker Pelosi her health care victory will be targetted en masse, by the legions who are strongly opposed.

It will cost any last-minute-Democratic-House-vote-switching-member their seat. Of course, if the bill fails then there will be no Margolies-Mezvinsky Effect.

For those House Members who think they may collapse under leadership pressure, here is a tried and true method for avoiding that fate: hide. Vote and get off the House floor, turn off your cell phone and hide somewhere you can not be found. Not one of your usual haunts. And go alone, so you aren’t outed by your staff.

From the NY Post’s “Prescriptions for Disaster” — when CBO scores the first ten years of spending, then we see the true cost of the House and Senate ObamaCare bills:

“Each bill is routinely “scored” for its 10-year costs from 2010-19. Yet this includes several years when the spending wouldn’t yet have kicked in. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fully 99.9 percent of the Pelosi bill’s costs would hit from 2013 onward. Similarly, 98.3 percent of Reid’s spending would come after 2014.

“The CBO reports that, in their true first 10 years, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, and the Senate bill would cost $1.7 trillion. Pelosi would raise Americans’ taxes by $1.1 trillion over that period, while Reid would hike them by $1 trillion.

And the House bill would siphon about $800 billion from Medicare to spend it elsewhere, while the Senate bill would suck out about $900 billion.”

The impact on our national debt:

“And if we discount the bills’ claims to divert hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare (which is already on the edge of insolvency), the CBO says the House bill would raise our national debt by about $650 billion in its real first decade, while the Senate bill would up it by $740 billion.

So, the bills would either sock older Americans by taking huge sums of money from Medicare — or hit future generations with huge tax hikes to cover the shortfall.”

I confess, it makes zero sense to me.

I’ve done the math and the political calculus keeps coming back a broken equation.

In general, if the strategic political forces are aligned properly, then the tactical level concerns resolve themselves. This mathematical rule in politics (it is very close to applied chaos theory) regularly produces victory for those applying the rule.

There are oh so very many outright political violations that irrationalism – an identifiable and documented strain of ideologies, among them, fascism — can only explain the behavior of the White House and the House and Senate leadership.

The following political actions are simply not rational:

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From Bloomberg:

A survey of 4,518 likely voters by Zogby International Aug. 28-31 put Obama’s approval rating at a record-low 42 percent; it also showed he’s well liked.

“He’s got to get control of his presidency,” said John Zogby, president of Zogby International.

And the Washington Post has the following assessment for Obamacare:

With health-care reform, the administration appears to have two options, one of which would involve the support of a single Republican senator, Olympia Snowe. The other option would involve using a parliamentary tactic to circumvent the usual 60-vote minimum for ending the Senate debate and instead ram through a more limited health-care bill with a bare majority, dispensing with the support of conservative Democrats or any of the Republicans.

Note that both of these “two options” involve the U.S. Senate.

And the U.S. House? The Washington Post is essentially announcing the U.S. House will wait for the U.S. Senate on health care — meaning that the House does not want to walk the plank a la Cap and Trade, only to watch the Senate let the House twist in the wind on their vote. The other possibility is that the House Leadership does not have the votes to pass health care.

Either reality means the Senate is up next on health care.

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