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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

For Kay Bailey Hutchison, Staying in Washington to Fight Health Care Means Expediting its Passage

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  December 18th, 2009 at 01:26 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Kay Bailey Hutchison, much maligned for campaigning in Texas during the health care debate, boldly announced that she would go to Washington and stay there to fight health care and kill it dead.

Instead, today she accelerated it getting to the Senate floor in a bit of Senate gamesmanship.

Harry Reid decided to rush the Defense Appropriations bill to the floor of the Senate. He had an agreement from the Republicans to get it there quickly so it could be dispensed with and the health care debate could be accelerated.

After the Senate Democrats broke 200+ years of Senate rules interpretations last week to cut short the reading of Senator Sander’s amendment, the Senate Republicans backed out of their deal with the Democrats. The Senate GOP unanimously agreed to filibuster the Defense Appropriations bill thereby forcing the health care legislation to wait.

Even Olympia Snowe agreed.

But the Defense legislation had 1,719 earmark projects worth $7.6 billion in it, a good bit of it going to Texas.

So Kay Bailey Hutchison broke her word to the Senate GOP and voted with the Democrats, thereby ending any hope of obstructing Harry Reid’s intended vote on health care. Once Kay Bailey Hutchison jumped ship, Snowe and Collins followed.

Now we creep closer to a health care vote that may or may not accelerate socialism.

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COMMENTS

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  • stigmo

    This damn bill is going to ruin my Christmas.

  • yoyo

    Idiocy.

  • dwattenb

    She did not matter, I watched it on TV last night They wheeled the old guy in on the wheel chair (Bryd) into the Senate floor and all the Dems started clapping. At that point those three votes were irrelavant, the DEMS knew they had the votes.

  • izoneguy

    Just as Obama has “dreamed” of being the president……

    Obama is a nightmare for America – don’t let
    Kay Bailout become a nightmare for Texas.

  • bk

    They held up the bill until the Dems wheeled in Byrd at 1am to make all 60 Dems there to vote yes, at which point the GOP votes didn’t matter.

    That’s two weeks in a row that Reid screwed over a Dem by forcing him to appear. Last Sat Lieberman had to walk 5 miles each way in lousy weather to cast the 60th vote on some issue. I don’t think he’s making too many friends among his colleagues, and during this holiday week they will have to ALL be present for all three cloture votes.

    Like Krauthammer said last night, it’s ironic that the Dems claim that tens of thousands of people are dying per year without this bill, yet none of the benefits kick in for another 5 years give or take a little. So those tens of thousands of deaths will continue into the term of the next president. But the vote has to happen ASAP and can’t wait a few days.

  • eburke

    The bottom line is that KBH demonstrated that she was willing to undercut the caucus, treat the abrogation of 200+ years of Senate rules and traditions like it was a broken date at the local DQ, and aid and abet the enemy.

    *This* is exactly what has been wrong with far too much of the GOP caucus for the last however many years, and for you to treat it like it was no big deal because they had the 60 votes they needed is the typical enabling attitude of those who don’t understand the larger message this sends.

    Bottom line – KBH proved, again, that she’s not there when we need her. Whether the Dems would’ve gotten 60 without her misses the point entirely.

  • Third Street

    I’m not happy that she and the Maine Twins broke ranks on the filibuster, but this would have happened even if they had all been on board. 40 votes are not 41.

    Demonstrating once again that it is dispiriting and unhelpful to blame Republicans for outcomes they are powerless to stop. We are going to win the war, but only if we stop taking shots at our own people for things they didn’t do.

  • WarEagle01

    Seriously. Texans?

  • http://www.WILLisms.com WILLisms

    KBH channeling John Kerry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tleFi4uL9pw

    The Senator has a TON of bad votes where it is her and a few Specter/Snowe/Collins style Republicans teaming up with Democrats, just this year.

  • http://uslibertyjournal.blogspot.com/ daezy

    It’s a matter of principle. This Republican Party needs to be cleaned out, and the broads (speaking as one) are the first to go — the chickification of the Party.

    Voting for earmaraks?!? Are they nuts?

  • izoneguy

    You know Rick Perry’s people are all over this…..

    Hutchison Votes With Democrats To End Republican Filibuster, Accelerating Health Care Bill?s Passage

    http://www.washingtonkay.com/blog/kay-abandons-healthcare-promise

    By voting to break the Republican filibuster, Sen. Hutchison broke a promise she made to Texans on Nov. 9 during a campaign speech in Corpus Christi to ?use every option provided to us in the Senate to filibuster this legislation.? (Corpus Christi Caller-Times, 11/10/09, ?Hutchison vows to fight health reform.?)

    Another day, another broken promise by Sen. Hutchison. After promising to filibuster health care, Sen. Hutchison abandoned her pledge and voted with the Democrats to bring the health care bill one step closer to reality.

  • texastherepublic

    Don’t seem to get our senators to voter for anything the people of the Republic of Texas want them too

  • texastherepublic

    Don’t seem to get our senators to voter for anything the people of the of Texas want them too

  • chbroussard

    Many of us are working very hard to keep her from even being elected dogcatcher in this state, much less governor.

  • TxCon

    Has Nelson (NE) been appeased?

  • Jonbontx

    She is no where close to being a conservative.

  • http://www.WILLisms.com WILLisms

  • Jonbontx

    her seat and let Gov. Perry appoint Michael Williams (a true conservative) to finish out her term. But she is more interested in her own self perservation, than the people of Texas, the GOP or the Republic.

    As a Texan, I am working to keep her out of the Gov’s mansion.

  • http://uslibertyjournal.blogspot.com/ daezy

    These are the kind that need to go. Watered down, thinskinned & dangerous to the Party

  • bk

    How can you argue they didn’t have the 60 votes? They didn’t have 60 votes until Byrd got rolled in else they’d have voted sooner and left him at the retirement home or whatever.

    Having said that, I think the GOP members should still have voted no, not just because of the shenanigans of the Democrats, but because of all the extra pork that the Dems stuck in the bill.

  • bk
  • fpete13527

    Texas is a great state with great people….KBH tries to bring shame to it. She needs to go…yesterday!!

    KBH has graduated to the top, high level RINO SUPREME list right up there with Chalie Crist.

  • orangemtl

    “Well, it doesn’t matter because it woulda passed anyway” is no excuse.
    Kay Bailout deserves to stay in Washington: retired, in a nice little condo. After the Texas voters hurl her out of contention for the governorship. Spineless RINO…
    And to think that NRSC and the RNC can’t figure out why people are so upset about a ‘big tent’ approach to Republican participation. Note to Mr Steele et al:
    we don’t WANT a big tent. We want big principles, resolutely defended, by elected representatives that actually know how a ‘principle’ works. Not to be confused with Kay Hutchison, who appears unfamiliar with the term.

  • eburke

    wouldn’t have gotten to 60 w/out KBH. What I posited was that that was absolutely irrelevant.

    KBH undercut the GOP caucus which does nothing but embolden the jackasses to continue to try to splinter us instead of psychologically confronting a brick wall at every turn.

    It also allows the Donks to continue to think that they can turn every rule, procedure and tradition on its head w/impunity. The GOP caucus finally grew a pair and decided to send a message to the donks that there might actually be a price to pay for all their dishonest and tyrannical actions, and KBH cut the legs right out from under them which emboldened the ME sisters to follow suit.

    We FINALLY decide to fight fire w/fire and thanks to Mrs. Insider Washington, the message was severely diminished. So, again, I don’t give a rat’s a$$ whether they would’ve gotten to 60 or not, Kay undercut the caucus at a pivotal time in this war we’re in.

    Shameful and unforgivable.

  • TxCon

    Dingy Harry would bring it to the floor without the 60 votes.

  • farstar99

    Just listening to what she said about Bush made me ill.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    I am not joking, and I don’t want to hear your excuse.

  • GregInFla

    Just sayin..

  • http://www.the41stvote.org rcov092

    she will vote for the bill trying to cobble together the very small sliver of Texans (total of 7) you could call “Progressive”. Lord knows she will need the votes because she has zero chance of being elected Governor. The downside is we will be still stuck with her in the Senate.

  • http://www.the41stvote.org rcov092

    n/t

  • itrytobenice

    They are supposedly putting in some anti abortion language, but the big prize is supposedly millions of dollars to NE in addition to helping the state with medicaid costs.

    AKA bribery. Par for the course.

  • http://www.WILLisms.com WILLisms

  • http://www.scottbomb.com scottbomb

    I’ve been planning to vote for Perry anyway but this has got to be the nail in her political coffin. All these commercials talking about how conservative she is…. She even got the endorsement of Dick Cheney. I don’t think an appearance from Reagan’s ghost could save her now.

  • jennifer_a

    For Debra Medina.

    http://MedinaForTexas.com

  • bonkey

    I am no fan of Kay. I live in Texas and she runs these adds of Perry saying nice thing about her. I think that is pretty classless.

    I am looking forward to the debate tonight to learn more about Medina. I don’t know much about her yet.

    I like Perry for the most part, so Medina will need to show me something in the debate, as well as have the conservative credentials to back it up.

    Hutchison is out of the picture, as far as my vote and support.

  • vrwcnut

    For everyone in the Lone Star Republic, watch the gubernatorial debate tonight. Televised and broadcast on numerous stations.

  • vrwcnut

    on a previous post which for some reason which my pre-laptop mind cannot fathom, I can’t find in the archives.

    Requisite disclaimer: I support Debra but am not on her staff. Just a guy trying to clean out some pond scum who currently are in office.

    Now, I’m attempting to answer the Texan who responded to one of my previous posts that he couldn’t vote for Debra because she wanted to legalize marijuana. That troubled me so I went to the source. They are understandably busy preparing for tonight so it took a while to get the straight answer.

    Debra’s position on drugs is that it is the responsibility of Texans- not the feds to decide this. Reviewed the Constitution loking for the people giving the feds authority to fight anything like the “war on drugs”. Of course, its not there.

    Whatever you think of this position, please watch the debate tonight and see her for yourself. The record clearly shows the other 2 are self-serving career politicians. (worst insult I could think of that could be printed here)