First of all, Erick, I noticed that your name came up during that interiview by Jake Tapper. Good going!

As for your point about not answering the question directly, I’ll stick up for McConnell here. McConnell’s first words in response were: “Well, certainly.” That seems pretty much synonymous with “yes.”

McConnell can probably be fauilted for a lot of stuff, but not that, IMHO. Likewise, McConnell’s decision not to filibuster into the evening of December 24 is not really something that he deserves to be blasted into outer space about. The fact that he stretched the debate and cloture vote to the day before Christmas is almost unorecedented (it hadn’t happened since the nineteenth century). Moreover, Senators like Inhofe and Coburn supported that decision, as did Sen. Cornyn.

The GOP needs to focus on substantive ways to prevent the Democrats from destroying the health care system, in a way that can attract the middle ground (i.e. independents). Yesterday, a newspaper in Mississippi suggested one way to dramatically scale back what the Dems are trying to do: “In a more perfect world, the government would dip its toes into the ocean of universal health care, perhaps by starting out with coverage only for catastrophic care.” There are many other ways as well.

This is from the obituary of former Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield:
“his news conferences were mostly a monosyllabic torrent of Yeps, Nopes, and Can’t says. But few people on Capitol Hill were more widely esteemed. Mansfield had the priceless knack of winning ? and keeping ? everyone’s trust.” Of course, it’s easier to win when you’re in the majority….

I wouldn’t rely too much on where ABC News inserted the period.

It may be true that McConnell could have delayed the vote until after Christmas, in which case he deserves criticism. I don’t know all the facts about that, so I’m not giving an opinion.

All I was saying is that whether he said “Well, certainly.” versus “Well, certainly….” seems kind of trivial. If we’re going to blast McConnell, then blast him fair and square about something that really matters. Likewise, whether a vote occurred in the AM or the PM of December 24 doesn’t seem like a big deal to me (nor does it seem like a big deal to Coburn, Inhofe, and Cornyn).

McConnell did maintain unanimity of a very fractious GOP caucus in the Senate, which is not a trivial accomplishment. I’m not convinced that any other Senator could have done any better, given the very low number of GOP Senators.

Maybe it’s too late to salvage this situation, but I would still urge the GOP to rise above just saying “no.” For instance, the GOP could identify some minimal level of catostrophic coverage that qualifies as “insurance,” and could propose an interstate agreement whereby every citizen has to use X dollars of his own money to cover himself with such a minimal catastrophic policy. This wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime, and the GOP could claim that tens of millions of people would thus become insured. Something like that, which would make the GOP look better to the big middle of voters. That might be enough to stop this monstrous bill.

I meant “residents” instead of “non-residents.”

I don’t think that Charles Krauthammer is a little troll:

We heard Michael Steele say earlier, he’s the head of the RNC, that these numbers are cooked because the head of the CBO was brought into the White House – I wish he hadn’t said that, because that’s not the reason. You don’t have to corrupt the CBO. It’s not. It’s very honest.
You cook the books by presenting the assumption that the CBO is required to assume it will happen but what everybody understands is not going to happen. That’s why the ostensible CBO number looks good. The real number is devastatingly in deficit.

Is there a chance, AChance, that you could be respectful?