Dem Senators are peeling off of President Obama’s government takeover of health care and its liberal fantasy land that spends more than a trillion and contains hundreds of billions in new taxes.

As James Carville told CNN, President Obama only has 57 votes.

Reuters James Pethokoukis is reporting that Senators Liberman, Landrieu and Nelson are at NO, and Bayh maybe too. Pethokoukis is reporting the same thing Hammond said in his memo, that reconciliation is a no-go. (Politico is reporting, correctly, that reconciliation rules would strip the Stupak amendment.)

As we all know, no 60 votes, no laundry. (Senator Reid needs 60 votes to break the filibuster on the motion to proceed to consider the bill. If he does not get 60 votes, ObamaCare never comes up on the Senate floor.)

There are whispers in Washington watering holes that some Dem Senators are quietly hoping Senator Nelson will vote against cloture on the motion to proceed. This will let the Senators who are up in 2010 off the hook from the nightmare of proceeding to this politically toxic bill.

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It’s worth the 45 seconds.

Michael E. Hammond is one of three mentors I have been lucky enough to work for during my career. When I worked for him he was the General Counsel of the U.S. Senate Steering Committee, he has run for Congress twice in New Hampshire and is now the General Counsel of Gun Owners for America. He is one of the two smartest political strategists I know. He is brilliant, a genius. Enjoy:

WEB EXCLUSIVE FOR REDSTATERS

November 13, 2009
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Michael Hammond
RE: Where We Are on ObamaCare

AN OVERVIEW OF WHERE WE ARE

At the beginning of this process last spring, I identified a four-step strategy to defeat ObamaCare: (1) Back Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi away from a deal which gives Democrats 90% of what they want. (2) Take reconciliation off the table. (3) Secure 41 Senate votes. (4) Use procedural roadblocks to prevent Harry Reid from playing “let’s make a deal” on the Senate floor.

We have accomplished the first three of these four objectives. Negotiations have collapsed, and Senate Republicans are unified. Reconciliation is off the table. We have 41 votes against the Reid bill. And the final step -– the Senate floor procedure –- is wholly within our control.

It would have been a gratuitous unexpected blessing if we had won in a way we had never anticipated –- if the Pelosi-puppet “Blue Dog Democrats” had refused to give Pelosi the 218 votes she needed to prevail in the House. We hoped –- but didn’t really expect –- that the Pelosi puppets would show courage, but they didn’t.

Now, with the American people opposing ObamaCare by a 54-to-42% margin in the most recent poll –- and with 40% of the opponents feeling strongly –- and with those figures being much more dramatic when you move away from a handful of “90% blue” east coast/west coast cities -– the outcome of the battle teeters on a knife’s edge, as it has always done since the beginning of the year.

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

First, we need to keep pounding Maine, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, and Connecticut. Secondary targets include North Dakota, Nevada, and Montana.

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Dem irrational behavior on health care continues — Senator Reid wants to decrease Medicare by half a trillion, and increase the Medicare payroll tax.

From today’s New York Times: “Reid Mulls Medicare Tax Increase.”

Uh, huh. (Dem Lemmings Unite!)

When are the Democrats going to start cracking some heads over those who have been egging them off the cliff called health care reform?

Answer: when they lose some elections.

Oh, they did lose elections in VA and NJ — only twice in the history of Virgina has the GOP taken all three top state positions, and this is one of those two times. And the exit polls show the independents voting for the GOP by a 2 to 1 margin in both NJ and VA.

After the Dems lost these elections, they barely passed health care reform out of the House. And still Sen. Reid and the White House and the House Leadership will not change their pass-health-care mantra.

What is ironic is the Dems have been down this road before, with President Clinton — and they somehow believe that a farther left reform with a government run health insurance plan is going to make everything politically better. But even in Ohio and Connecticut polls show that it is not going to be OK.

The Dems won’t discipline those who got them to this politically painful place because the Democratic party’s pursuit of health care reform is not politically rational. They are all collectively putting their hand in the flame, and will not pull it out.

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From Zogby:

“A majority of likely voters (72%) believe that a modern American electoral tradition will hold and the President’s party will lose seats in the upcoming 2010 Congressional elections. Forty-one percent of likely voters believe the Democrats will lose seats, but not the majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate while nearly one-third (31%) believe Congressional Democrats will lose at least one of their two majorities.

“Only 5% believe Republicans will lose seats in the 2010 elections and 14% say it will be a close election and there will not be a major shift either way. Even a majority of Democrats surveyed (56%) believe their party will lose seats in the election, while a majority of Republicans (54%) believe they will gain the majority in at least one house of Congress.”

Robert Costa has written an interesting piece about the many things that could kill ObamaCare in the U.S. Senate.

It’s true, the patient known as ObamaCare is looking blue and convulsing on the table as Senators Reid and Durbin wonder what to do about these many symptoms (per Costa):

1. Time. Costa does not say it, but Senator Coburn is threatening to have the bill read, front to back, all 2,000 pages, prior to each amendment. Hmmm. Costa’s point is time is on the side of ObamaCare’s death by thousands of pages of text.

2. President Obama. Can you say radioactive and toxic for moderate Dems running for re-election — Costa — didn’t say that, I am taking some liberties.

3. GOP Amendments. Guns and immigration, guns and babies, guns and taxes, guns and spending, guns and Medicare cuts, guns and government control of your health care, guns and health care rationing — did I mention guns? (OK, so Costa did not mention guns.)

4. Abortion. (See entire internet on Stupak.) For extra points, see Senator Nelson (D-NE) and Stupak amendment in the U.S. Senate.

5. The public option. Ah, the liberal’s shimmering holy grail — its right there, but oh, I think I see it — but it is elusive isn’t it — See Google for “Senator Lieberman (I-CT) public option.”

Not mentioned by Costa but in play: health care rationing, immigration, death panels, health care databases (guns), privacy, Medicare cuts, taxes and spending.

Scalpel!

Senator Reid’s very qualified and really one of the best press guys in the city, announced yesterday that Senator Reid has filed the paperwork so the he will be able to proceed to the cloture motion on the motion to proceed next week.

This means that if Senator Reid gets 60 votes, he can bring the House bill up before the Senate.

If he does not get 60 votes, no bill comes before the U.S. Senate. Or Senator Reid may do what he did on the Doc fix — the unpaid for $250 billion Medicare spending bill — bring it up so it can fail — and then go back to the backroom to negotiate. Pretty clear and simple, yes?

For more information about what the future for ObamaCare will be, here is today’s video interview with Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) about his views of the Senate health care bill. Pay attention to the Senator’s quote “it’ll never get here.”

Then, turn off the sound, watch the interviewer and the Senator’s body language. What do you see?

(And now for something completely different) today’s news that the Vatican is searching the Heavens for alien life follows previous announcements by the Vatican that belief in the existence of alien life and belief in Christianity are not incompatible.

Wow. Yeah.

So if you are the head of one of the world’s largest religions, and your leadership believes (presumably given the careful and slow nature of the Vatican, such a belief would be grounded in extensive research and fact) that alien life exists (while publicly stating alien life could exist), why would the Vatican be spending time and resources on this issue?

The answer is pretty straight forward, the Vatican is preparing for the day when the rest of the world knows — as opposed to believes — that alien life (that is intelligent visitors) exist.

The Vatican, and for that matter every other major religion, needs to be prepared philosophically and lay down a foundation of theology that is consistent with the existence of alien, intelligent life.

Simply put, the Vatican is preparing for the day aliens are revealed, or reveal themselves in an unambiguous manner.

Prudence dictates being prepared in this regard. Perhaps the whole Galileo Galilei inquisition thing has modified the Vatican’s approach to theologically disruptive discoveries.

(Also) looking at it through the other end of the telescope, the Vatican is preparing humanity for this knowledge by making public its efforts.

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From the Hill:

“More than 40 lawmakers vowed to oppose the final healthcare bill if the House language on abortion is not removed.

Reps. Diana DeGette (Colo.) and Louise Slaughter (N.Y.) led the group of Democrats in writing to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) threatening to withhold support for a final conference report if it strictly prohibits federal funding for abortion services.

“We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law,” reads a draft of the letter. DeGette and Slaughter, who is the chairwoman of the powerful Rules Committee, also wrote President Barack Obama requesting a meeting on the issue next week.”

The pro-abortion Democrats may have two options: a) accept pro-life language prohibiting federal funding of abortions, or b) kill their own health bill.

The difference between the U.S. House and U.S. Senate debate on the Stupak amendment is stark.

The pro-abortion Members of Congress in the House, and pro-abortion groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood, rolled over and did not threaten to derail the bill because Speaker Pelosi asked them to. So they played dead.

Senator McCaskill (D-MO), who is pro-abortion, publicly said she could live with the Stupak amendment. (This link also shows the deep net-roots anger against NARAL and Emily’s List for playing dead and letting Stupak pass at the request of the Speaker.)

Senator McCaskill is not the Speaker of the House, and she was not so lucky — she did not get a free pass.

She was instantly pounded by pro-abortion forces. Senator McCaskill has now changed her tune — she will not support Stupak in the Senate — all in the same day.

Pro-Abortion Forces on the Defensive

The precedent set by the Stupak amendment in the House has put the pro-abortion forces on the defensive. They lost a major battle and are now reacting very aggressively.

They cannot allow a Stupak type amendment to pass the Senate. It will make their position in Conference extremely weak, untenably weak. It will lock-in the pro-life victory in the House.

If the Senate also passes an amendment, close to or like the Stupak amendment, then the bill coming out of Conference would force the pro-abortion groups to oppose the Conference report, and they would have to join with the Republicans to kill ObamaCare.

While the dollar hits a 15 month low, and gold hits an all time high, and the editorial page editor of the Washington Post (no less) is warning:

“The bill also could take America a step closer to bankruptcy. And for progressives in particular — for those who believe that government has a mission to help the poor and protect the vulnerable — that prospect should be alarming. If federal debt continues rising on its present path, hastened by a $1 trillion health-care bill, it is the poor and vulnerable who will be most harmed.”

This is also why some political risk analysts are connecting the dots between PelosiCare and the value of the dollar:

“If the Reserve Bank of India’s directors had any doubts about the wisdom of buying 200 tonnes of IMF gold — and likely dumping some U.S. Treasuries in the process — they had only to watch last weekend’s legislative activities on Capitol Hill. The proceedings provided plenty of reassurance that the move was a smart play.

“Nothing in the healthcare reform bill that passed the House of Representatives should give investors in dollar-denominated assets any confidence that U.S. policymakers are serious about tackling the government’s structural budget deficit.”

Amazing as it is that the Washington Post would be pointing out the obvious about the Democrats $1.2 Trillion health care spending plan, since liberal and progressive news writers have given aide, comfort and a criticism-free ride for those who are doing the spending.

It is apparent that there is no amount of money too high to spend for the House Democrats on health care reform. CBO confirms the amended House bill spends $3 Trillion.

But now Fred Hiatt has really stepped over the lines — he is “calling out” President Obama for his failure to cut keep his promise about the health bill spending and the deficit.

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I thought the President said passing ObamaCare — doing the exact opposite of what the public wants — will help their poll numbers?

From ABC NEWS “Brushfires and Fantasies” by Rick Klein:

In a thousand-cuts kind of bill, some of the cuts are self-inflicted. The bleeding now, over abortion rights, adds to the long list of complications for Democrats who are balancing tricky math on the Hill.

“An attempt at healing, though after the fact: “This is a health care bill, not an abortion bill,” President Obama told ABC’s Jake Tapper in an interview yesterday.

But the president is no longer quite right. The health care bill has become an abortion bill — and an immigration bill, and a tax bill, and a jobs bill, and a spending bill — not to mention the most significant re-working of the nation’s health care system in half a century.

The growing scope is a consequence of the scope of the president’s ambitions, plus the ever-expanding need to attract more votes for something that not everyone agrees is a policy or political winner. (How long before we hear from Republicans that health care reform is simply too big not to fail?)”

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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Likely voter polling results from Rasmussen:

Over the weekend, Democratic leaders spoke of an historic moment as health care reform legislation passed the House of Representatives. But that legislative victory failed to significantly move public opinion.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. Most (52%) remain opposed.

Only 25% Strongly Support the plan while 42% are Strongly Opposed.

Support for the plan has remained essentially unchanged for months. Last week, it was supported by 42% and two weeks ago support was at 45%. It has generally stayed between 41% and 46% since July, and support has bounced above that level only in the wake of nationally televised appeals by the president.

As has been the case for months, Democrats favor the plan while Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are opposed. The latest numbers show support from 81% of those in the president’s party. The plan is opposed by 90% of Republicans and 58% of unaffiliated voters.

Rasmussen Reports continues to track public opinion on the health care plan on a weekly basis.

Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters now say passage of the legislation will increase health care costs while 53% say it will hurt the quality of care.

From Charles Hurt:

“Saturday’s vote to create a massive government-run health-insurance program is to Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats what the Battle of Gettysburg was to the South.

It will be remembered as the high point of their unswerving efforts to demand government solutions to every big problem.

It was their most daring stab, deepest into enemy territory.

And the creeks will fill with the political blood of the dead who charged blindly into the angry enemy fire.

Long from now, gauzy-eyed liberals will tear up at the memory of those who pressed forward through the mindless carnage despite knowing full well the sure fate staring back at them.

For years, they will reminisce about which way who voted and how they were never the same after that.

And, like Gettysburg and the Confederacy, the vote will mark the beginning of the end for Pelosi and her doomed crew.”

Watch it here.

This means that Majority Leader Reid, in the words of one Democratic lobbyist, “can get on the bill, but can’t get off.”

Meaning that Senator Reid cannot end the filibuster of the bill by the Republicans and Senator Lieberman — unless Senator Reid drops the public option.

Given Speaker Pelosi’s throwing overboard of the robust public option, the no-enforcement of the health benefit provision for immigrants and the pro-abortion crowd in order to pass her $3 Trillion spending bill, it is possible Senator Reid will throw the public option overboard.

The one thing they cannot change — public option or not — is the cost.

Three trillion in spending ought to be pounded on repeatedly.

Rothenberg has done a great service by documenting the most accurate pollsters which most accurately predicted the results of last Tuesday’s elections.

In the heat of predictable arguments about which polls are the most accurate leading up to the 2010 mid-term elections, Rothenberg’s list of the most accurate pollsters in the off-year elections will provide the list of the the handful which should be listened to, and which should be ignored.

Here they are:

Rothenberg’s Pollster of the Cycle Award: “SurveyUSA, which once again proved its worth, at least in pre-election polls. The firm’s final Virginia numbers were eerily close…”

The other handful of firms who were the next closest: Public Policy Polling and Quinnipiac University.

Research2000 was called out by Rothenberg was called out for being the most inaccurate because of its overstatement of support for Deeds in Virginia.

Interesting, Rothenberg called the media to task for describing “Dede Scozzafava, the Republican nominee in New York’s 23rd district, as a moderate.” Rothenberg says:

“Scozzafava doesn’t only support abortion rights - often a marker for Republican “moderates” - she supports gay marriage. But she doesn’t only support gay marriage; she supported President Barack Obama’s stimulus proposal that not a single House Republican favored. But she didn’t just support the stimulus package; she supports the Employee Free Choice Act (what opponents call “card check”), which is opposed by virtually the entire business community. And in the end, of course, she endorsed the Democrat in the race.

Scozzafava is a liberal Republican by any standard, and she should have been labeled as such. She is more liberal than every Republican in the House of Representatives and many Democrats.”

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.