That was Rep. Stupak’s (DEMOCRAT) blunt response to David Axelrod’s assertion that the pro-life language currently in the health care rationing bill would be ‘adjusted.’ Stupak’s having none of it:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) pledged on Tuesday morning to defeat healthcare reform legislation if his abortion amendment is taken out, saying 10 to 20 anti-abortion-rights Democrats would vote against a bill with weaker language.

“They’re not going to take it out,” Stupak said on “Fox and Friends,” referring to Senate Democrats. “If they do, healthcare will not move forward.”

See Hot Air for the video. Stupak claims to have more than enough votes to shut down any final version that removes his amendment, which is both false and true. It’s false because the closeness of the original vote reflected a lot of horse-trading on the individual Member of Congress level; theoretically, the Speaker of the House could simply pressure the Democrats who got to vote ‘no’ last time to vote ‘yes’ this time.  It’s true because one of the reasons that they were able to get a final vote was because while the Stupak amendment was scored by NRLC, the final bill was not.  Strip out Stupak, and a vote for health care rationing becomes a vote for federal funding of abortions.  The NRLC pretty much cannot not score that appropriately.

I close with this observation: this situation for the Democrats is pretty much entirely due to the decision by House Republicans to oppose the health care rationing bill en masse.  They’re doing that because the Congressional Democratic leadership decided to shut out everybody except themselves and various outside lobbyists when it came time to put this monstrosity of a bill together.  And because the President didn’t intervene when it became clear that the process was disrupting his narrative, we’re now at the point where the Democratic party has to decide which side of the abortion debate is safer to infuriate.

But don’t feel bad for them: after all, they didn’t learn a blessed thing from their mistakes over the ’stimulus’ and cap-and-trade.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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.

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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In the wake of the House vote for President Obama’s government takeover of health care, some conservative commentators are asking what may have been had House Republicans decided to follow Rep. John Shadegg’s (R-AZ) advice to vote present on the Stupak-Pitts amendment.  The amendment prohibits the federal government from spending any funds to provide abortion under the plan’s public option and prohibits anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a health insurance plan that covers abortion.

Sixty-four Democrats voted with Republicans in passing Stupak.  The argument says that had Republicans voted “present” or “no” on the amendment, it would have failed.  The theory is that those sixty-four Democrats would have abandoned the final bill without the prohibition included, effectively killing the overall effort to socialize the nation’s health care system.

But that thinking represents the triumph of hope over experience.  It supposes that Nancy Pelosi, who has shown herself to be nothing if not a cold-blooded and ruthless political operative, would not take any other necessary steps to find the votes necessary to pass the bill.  The only reason Stupak was allowed to come to a vote in the first place was because Pelosi was willing to shiv two-thirds of her caucus to get the bill passed.  Pelosi, and Obama, would have moved any obstacle, made any promise, and broken any number of arms to get the White House a “victory” on health care, however hollow that victory may ultimately turn out to be.

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