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Late last evening came word that House Republicans intend to keep parts of Obamacare. Even if the United States Supreme Court throws the whole law out, House Republicans intend to resurrect portions of Obamacare. House Republicans publicly say the story is wrong. I’ve talked to several House Republicans who tell me the story is actually on the money and the Republicans now denying it are really playing at semantics.

These House Republicans tell me these denials about the accuracy of the story are equivalent to the House GOP semantically arguing it was living up to its Pledge to Nowhere requirement for $100 billion in cuts that actually amounted to something like $34 billion. Conservatives in the House of Representatives tell me explicitly to go with Politico on this and be very wary of the House GOP Leadership when it comes to repeal.

It is a sad time for the Republican Party. The base must treat its leaders as if they are Soviets — trust but verify their statements. And lately, it is harder and harder to verify their statements. The work of the Tea Party must continue or within a decade I honestly do not believe the GOP will be one political party.

In both Indiana and Nebraska, the Tea Party has continued to make gains. People have flat out rejected the establishment favorites for U.S. Senate – Dick Lugar and Jon Bruning, respectively – in favor of candidates who offer a challenge to the status quo.

Will Texans prove what they’re made of and do the same?

I love Texas. But let’s face it – the Texas congressional delegation is mediocre at best and leaves much to be desired.

Now, Texas has the chance to get it right – by sending Ted Cruz to the U.S. Senate. But will they? Maybe. But we have a lot to do and the Republican Primary in Texas is only 2 weeks from today.

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Earlier we covered Microsoft’s new Pirate Pay, which I said sounded like a DoS attack against copyright infringers. Others agree and say it may be illegal, which is true. Sure enough, Pirate Bay is under DDoS attack. Has Pirate Pay gone rogue? Cybersecurity and copyright, all in one issue.

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Many of us have taken it for granted that all Republicans would work for full repeal of Obamacare.  After all, not a single Republican voted for it.  However, it is always important to understand the reasons why politicians support or oppose a piece of legislation.

When you listen to many prominent Republicans voicing their disdain for Obamacare, you generally hear the following complaints: it raises taxes, it cuts Medicare, it contains death panels, it is 2,700 pages long – and most notably – the individual mandate.

The problem is that these are all ancillary to the crux of what is so offensive about Obamacare.  The overarching concern about Obamacare is that it harnesses the factors that have already driven up the cost of healthcare and health insurance, most prominently, the mandates and subsidies, and multiplies them to the nth degree.  The tax increases, Medicare cuts, and individual mandate are merely tools to fund those interventions.  Many Republicans never had a problem with them.  This is why they were never repulsed by Romneycare, which doesn’t contain tax hikes and Medicare cuts.  As for the individual mandate of MassCare, they contend that there is nothing wrong with a state mandate.

As such, it comes as no surprise to read these tidbits in Politico:

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Phil Bailey sat next to South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts when Knotts called Governor Nikki Haley, then a candidate for Governor, a “raghead.”

Phil Bailey did nothing.

Phil Bailey is the Executive Director of the South Carolina Senate Democratic Caucus. It seems he is now intent on one upping Jake Knotts.

Bailey, who had no problem with Knotts’ “raghead” comment when even the First Vice Chairman of the State GOP, Patrick Haddon, was calling for Knotts’s resignation, seems determined to one up Knotts with racism.

Bailey has been on twitter referring to Nikki Haley, a Methodist of Indian descent, as the “Sikh Jesus.” Governor Haley’s parents are sikh, but she and her husband attend a Methodist Church.

Not content to do it just once, Phil Bailey did it a second time, complete with a picture of a dog.

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From the diaries.

Texas is ground zero in the national higher education reform movement. While the Washington crowd tends to fixate on President Obama’s piddling slap fight with Congressional Republicans over government-secured student loan rates, the real action on fixing higher ed is happening in Austin, Texas. The battle between Rick Perry and the higher ed reformers on one hand versus UT-Austin President Bill Powers and the Ivory Tower status quo on the other hand has been marked by years of grueling and often dull trench warfare that was punctuated last week by a flurry of bombs, beginning with a tuition freeze, followed by rumors of the UT President’s termination, and culminating in a textbook social media public relations campaign that deserves serious examination. And the consequences of this fight? Well, what happens in Texas won’t stay in Texas.

This is the story of “I Stand with Bill Powers,” a remarkably well-executed example of online astro-turfing.

Bill Powers is the President of the University of Texas at Austin. He individually receives an annual income roughly twelve times the median household income of Texas, not counting six figures of deferred compensation or benefits. He commands a robust team of sharp folks internally at UT and has secured the big guns as outside public relations counsel. There is now an ongoing effort– a well-orchestrated social media campaign which appears highly inorganic– to “save” him. Save from what and for what is the difficult part to figure out.

This post aims to 1. provide some context for the UT kerfuffle itself, 2. cast some light on how people and organizations successfully astro-turf social media campaigns, 3. provide reasons why members of the media ought to be a bit more careful in how they report on the online/digital/new media horse race, and 4. offer some thoughts on what comes next.

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Well, that didn’t take long.  Just one week into the conference committee on the highway bill, Republicans are showing signs of caving on their insistence that the Keystone pipeline be approved as part of the deal.

Throughout the past few months, we have been chronicling how Republicans have been apathetic to the underlying vices of the highway bill (S. 1813).  They basically told the Democrats in committee that they have every intention of passing the Senate bill; they just want a provision approving the Keystone pipeline as part of the agreement.  As any negotiator that lacks the credulousness of a toddler understands, once you take your bargaining chip off the table, the other side has no reason to give in.  Since Republicans have guaranteed Democrats that the tax and spend highway bill is too big to fail, Democrats will wait them out until they agree to jettison the Keystone provision.  And that is exactly what is happening.

Take a look at these quotes from The Hill:

Republicans are pressing for approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a final House-Senate transportation bill but appear unlikely to draw a line in the sand that jeopardizes the infrastructure legislation.

While the proposed Alberta-to-Texas pipeline is a top GOP and oil-industry priority, Republicans might have incentive to keep the matter unresolved, enabling them to continue using Keystone as a political weapon during the campaign season. [...]

“The overall Republican conference position is not to sink the conference report over [Keystone XL], however, as keeping that issue alive through the elections is also acceptable,” an oil industry source told The Hill.

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On Monday, when the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia smacked down the Obama NLRB’s new “ambush” election procedures, the court made clear that the union-controlled labor board overstepped its bounds by imposing its new rules without a proper quorum (as required under a U.S. Supreme Court case).

That, however, has not deterred the NLRB’s chairman (and union attorney) Mark Pearce from vowing to find a way to re-impose the ambush election procedure on America’s union-free workplaces.

According to a press release issued Tuesday, the NLRB chief stated:

“We continue to believe that the amendments represent a significant improvement in our process and serve the public interest by eliminating unnecessary litigation,” he said. “We are determined to move forward.” [Emphasis added.]

As the NLRB’s ambush elections were established without a proper quorum, the NLRB may end up simply re-voting on the issue using a quorum comprised of President Obama’s constitutionally-questionable recess appointments.

That re-vote could happen within a week or two, according to Industrial Relations Professor Gary Chaison.

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Today is May 16th. On this date in 1920, Joan of Arc was beatified and canonized by the Vatican. Man, first burned at the stake, then fired from a canon? That chick just could not catch a break!! On this date in 1965, SpaghettiOs went on sale in American supermarkets for the first time. You had to go to Morganville to buy them, which is what they called Shelbyville at the time. The cans were five for a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five Os for a bee” you’d say. Also on this date, in 1868, President Andrew Johnson was acquitted during a Senate impeachment hearing over alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors” by one vote. Johnson successfully argued that they were not high crimes because he did not inhale, and that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Demeanors”. And finally, today is “National Love A Tree Day”, where people are encouraged to go outside and hug a tree. Seriously. Here is a helpful instructional video on how to celebrate. Consider this an Open Thread.

Do-Nothing Democrats | Free Beacon
“Senate Democrats are poised to continue their impressive streak of budgetary negligence on Wednesday by unanimously rejecting as many as five different budgets, including the one offered by President Obama.”

Video Knocks Obama’s “Bureau of Womanhood Conformity” | LifeNews
“Today, the Susan B. Anthony List released its latest web ad entitled “Womanhood,” rebuking President Obama, his allies in Congress, and the abortion lobby for the ‘War on Women.’”

Walker speeds release of positive jobs data | JSOnline
“State officials said they show a gain of 23,321 jobs (public and private) between December 2010 and December 2011, which represents Gov. Scott Walker’s first full year in office.”

Chris Matthews Is Dumb | Big Journalism
“… after relentlessly mocking how well Governor Sarah Palin would hypothetically do on “Jeopardy,” Matthews made a king-size fool of himself in reality [video].”

Morning Bell: President Me | The Foundry
“President Obama insinuated yesterday that if you don’t support his policies, it’s not due to philosophical differences, but because of his name. Answering a question on The View about tight polls, he said: ‘When your name is Barack Obama, it’s always going to be tight. Barack Hussein Obama.’”

Have Unions ‘Occupied’ the Occupiers? by Rick Berman

spruik (sprook): verb To make or give a speech, especially extensively; spiel.
(via Dictionary.com)

From the diaries.

Pete Hegseth – Decorated Combat Veteran, Executive Director of Vets for Freedom, U.S. Senate Candidate, Patriot

Pete Hegseth, who is running for the GOP endorsement for U.S. Senate in MN, was kind enough to sit down and provide his valuable time for an interview. In the interest of time, I edited the interview down, but was careful to keep the core of his answers.

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Slightly contra Instapundit, this call for Mickey Mouse as a write-in on the California ballot is a blogger’s joke rather than an actual movement [UPDATE: I am informed in comments here that this is meant absolutely seriously; please be assured that I had no intention of mocking either the sentiment or the activity], but if it’s kidding then it’s kidding on the square. And it’s illustrating something that is perhaps being under-reported: the way that Obama’s not been doing all that well in the primaries for an incumbent.

I mean, yes: we’ve had it noted that Obama only racked up 59.4% of the West Virginia primary vote; 80.9% of New Hampshire’s; and 79.2% of North Carolina’s. But here are some other primary race vote totals, thus far (all via The Green Papers): Rhode Island, 83.4%. Louisiana, 76.5%. Alabama, 80.8%. Massachusetts, 81.2%, Oklahoma, 57.1%. To give you a baseline… if you remove places like American Samoa or Guam, if I read this right in 2004 George Bush never dipped below 89.5% (Idaho) of the primary vote in states he won and 79.6% (New Hampshire) in states that he didn’t. Other states of note in 2004, to give you an idea: Alabama, 92.8%. Kentucky, 92.5%. Massachusetts, 90.6%. Rhode Island, 84.9%.

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People often ask me what can be done to move the elected officials within the Republican Party rightward.  Well, for one thing, we need to elect more conservatives.  But more importantly, we need those conservatives to obtain positions of power, such as chairmanships of the committees that set our domestic policy agenda.

Not surprisingly, all the relevant committee chairmen are either conduits for leadership or are even more liberal than leadership.  Here is a list of the chairmen along with their respective 2011 scores from Heritage Action:

Committee	Chairman	HAFA Score
Agriculture	Frank Lucas	55
Appropriations	Hal Rogers	56
Armed Services	Buck McKeon	56
Budget	Paul Ryan	78
Education	John Kline	67
Energy & Commerce	Fred Upton	52
Ethics	Jo Bonner	56
Financial Services	Spencer Bachus	64
Foreign Affairs	Illena Ros Lehtinen	47
Homeland Security	Peter King	47
House Administration	Dan Lungren	58
Judiciary	Lamar Smith	59
Natural Resources	Doc Hastings	57
Oversight	Darrell Issa	75
Rules	David Dreier	58
Science, Space, & Tech	Ralph Hall	67
Small Business	Sam Graves	63
Transportation & Infrastructure	John Mica	67
Veterans’ Affairs	Jeff Miller	91
Ways and Means	David Camp	59
Intelligence	Mike Rogers-Michigan	60

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