House Dems Deserve What They Get

House Democrats must be pretty stupid.

Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts are trying to wrestle 216 votes out of a hodgepodge of dissenters. Nobody, even on the Democrat side, really wants to vote for this thing.

The House, in a bid to get ‘assurances’ from the Senate that they will pass this via reconciliation, want a letter from Senate Democrats.

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First, why should America trust the Democrats…when they don’t trust themselves?

Second, that letter is meaningless. Senate Democrats can only promise to go the course of reconciliation. After that, nothing is really under their control. Reconciliation can be a long, drawn out, messy process. I have no doubt that eventually, the Senate can pass something. But it will very likely look nothing like the House bill currently on the table.

Blue Dogs are in a frantic. Co-chairperson of the Blue Dogs, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), called the Slaughter rule ‘poison’. “While deeming – like reconciliation – has been used by Republicans and Democrats in the past, the context in which it would be used in this case leads me to conclude that it would poison an already terribly partisan atmosphere and leave the Congress even less able to find bipartisan solutions to fiscal problems that are on the verge of becoming overwhelming.”

And thus, in a few weeks (or more likely, a few months) we will be back where we started. The House will again have to confront a Senate bill that they don’t like and don’t want to vote for. And all of that comes after all the underhanded dealings and backroom deals. The Louisiana, Connecticut and Montana deals remain in place, and the seniors in Nebraska and Florida apparently are left out in the cold. And after they have broken all Congressional precedent with the Slaughter rule.

This at a time when Barack Obama’s ratings are in the gutter. He now has a 43% disapproval rating in the Rasmussen poll…the same level of disapproval that George W. Bush had at the end of his term. (To note: Obama’s positive approvals are 10 points higher than Bush’s was).

If you wanted to create an atmosphere for electoral defeat in November, you couldn’t come up with a plan better than this.