Horse-Trading Farmhand.
Speaking Dan Henninger, WSJ, on Friday 12, re the difference between Senate Majority Leader and VPOTUS, and then the accidental POTUS LBJ and POTUS Obama. LBJ built the foundation for the Great Society by starting in the Senate with the extremely cautious and conservative (and Jim Crow) Democratic bloc in the South as early as 1957 -- passing the 1957 Civil Rights Act one vote at a time. LBJ argued that it was critical that the bill pass while maintaining good and meaningful relations between the opponents and proponents. LBJ also argued for incrementalism, in that the 1957 bill was only four pages long and did not achieve anything close to the comprehensive protection of rights in the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965. LBJ believed in small bites in order to move to eating the whole pie without Richard Russell smashing the table and chairs and ending the meal. Also, once the farm-boy LBJ was POTUS, he horse-traded fiercely to bring along the reluctant Western senators, such as promising them new dams and irrigation money. The contrast with how the rookie Senator Obama has conducted his administration is Sun and Moon. POTUS Obama has reached for a vast reordering of the economy without any votes from the GOP and by damaging if not wrecking the seats of conservative Democrats from the South. Not only is POTUS Obama not LBJ, but also POTUS Obama is draining the Democratic Party of the strength it has built in the New South.
Whip Count.
Spoke David Drucker, Roll Call, to learn that the Parliamentarian of the Senate has ruled that the Senate version of the healthcare bill must be voted on by a majority of the House Democrats (216) and then must go to POTUS for signature into law. At that point, the Democratic Senate must move the so-called sidecar bill to fix the Cornhusker trick, the pro-life trick, and all the other pork in the Senate. Am told that the Parliamentarian cannot rule out the GOP amendments endlessly. The GOP calls it the votorama. This process can last till November. And when and if the GOP changes one comma in the healthcare law (act), it must go back to the House for another vote of 216. (Late news: rumor on the HIll is to call for the vote on Wednesday 17. Also, it is said that Stupak and his ten or eleven fellows cannot be solved -- since they cannot fix the Senate bill for abortion banning -- and that Mrs. Pelosi will make up for it elsewhere. Also the GOP is saying now that the whip is ten short. I still count under 200, also.
I guess the question is, who is/was the better fabian socialist? LBJ or Obama? How about why go there at all (in terms of passing such legislation now)? The great society was a disaster and so it Obamacare and anything else the mountebank in chief wants. It's going to be a costly november for the dems this year.
Before the election in 2008, there were some who asked the question: What if Barack Hussein Obama should lose? The question was not asked with the intent of speculating about a possible McCain presidency. (McCain was not the issue.) Rather it was asked in foreboding of what could happen in what had become all but unthinkable: the absence of Obama. Like the repeated sounds that a moth’s wings make against the glass of a light bulb, the allusion was always the same and pointed to the possibility of civil strife.
Obama has seemingly put all his eggs in the ‘health care’ basket. The question needs be asked: What if all his eggs should break? Will he be a ‘lame duck’ with barely a year under his belt? Who will run the nation in the meantime? Congress?
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Frankly, the difference between Obama and LBJ is that with 20+ years in Congress and has former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he was owed more favors and knew where more bodies were buried than any recent such leader. In short, he could call in favors and extort more support than anyone since. Rahmbo's problem, which has become Obama's problem, is that neither of them knew enough about the Congress as a whole or their respective houses to have acquired enough G2 on the members for the agenda they set out to accomplish.