1. Pelosi was going to get that bill passed regardless of what the GOP was going to do. Period. That fix was in; we all knew it beforehand.

2. The one good thing that happened was Stupak; namely, you now have a whole host of Democrats on the record against federal funding of abortion. That has value.

3. When they attempt to pull Stupak out of the bill, even though that won’t be the main determinant of what happens, the Democrats will get to fight amongst themselves on the issue. Any kind of stink bomb you can set off in their ranks to make them eat their own is a viable weapon.

sorry for the nitpicking.

I think passing Stupak was the greatest thing Republicans could have done:

They keep Stupak, 41 Democrats have said they would vote against final bill.

They toss Stupak, every pro-life Democrat will jump ship.

We win either way!

The votes for the Stupak Amendment may pay big dividends for Republicans later. whether it will pay dividends depends entirely on what happens in the Senate.

If HCR passes in the Senate and we end up with it in the end…then all the critisisms of those who voted for this amendment will be justified…but I don’t see this or much of anything getting through the Senate…AT ALL…

So what’s my Epiphany you ask?

If this all dies in the Senate…then what Stupak succeeded in doing is getting a bunch of Red State Democrats on record as voting for it…I realize this wasn’t in the calculations…but the beauty of it is that had Stupak gone down, these Red State Dems would have voted against the bill bringing no benefit to the Republican Party beyond knowing this wasn’t going anywhere much earlier.

As it is…you’ve got conservative Democrats on record voting for a socialist health care plan that is opposed by a majority of voters especially in these districts.

again…this all depends on the deal dying in the Senate…if it passes…then by all means let the guns blast away…but for right now…this could all work to our benefit so let’s not be so quick to attack Abortion opponents for wanting to make sure Abortions weren’t funded in the unlikely event this all becomes law.

Oh…and I also alluded to another benefit of the Stupak Amendment in Erick’s thread.

Donna Brizil was on This Week complaining that this mandate from the central government de-funds abortions in even private insurance plans since it would stop abortions from being paid for out of private plans offered in the insurance pool created by this legislation….Dems and Pro Aborts will be hoisted on their own petards because their pet cause will fall victim to their proclivity to regulate and centralize everything into a one size fits all regulatory regime controlled by a centralized government bureaucracy. Not only will there be no federal funding for abortions…there will be no funding for abortiuons by insurance…PERIOD!!! NO MATTER WHETHER IT IS PUBLIC OR PRIVATE INSURANCE!

A delicious irony indeed!

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

Senate Conservatives Fund House Conservatives Fund Michael Williams for Senate

Marco 2010 Toomey US Senate SarahPAC

I reread the original post it I realized it was confusing the way I wrote it.

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

Senate Conservatives Fund House Conservatives Fund Michael Williams for Senate

Marco 2010 Toomey US Senate SarahPAC

by giving cover for PLINO’s to vote for the 3296 after the Stupak Amendment. NV would have been the Right strategy IMO…. Who cares if they would have indeed found some other form of coverage and/or PAYOFF to bribe them to vote for 3296, they should have forced them to go for those other methods and continued to expose the horse-trading and manipulation.

Pro-Life Republicans knew this was just cover (Duplicity) voting….

Mooncalves led to the Slaughter…. The STUPID (er… Stupak) Amendment is just a strategy boondoggle Republicans stepped in out of LAZINESS and unwillingness to VOTE NO and have to go back and actually engage, explain, educate, constituents as to WHY it was all a SHAME/SHELL-GAME Vote and a NO vote the Right vote (and NOT, by any means would it have been a Pro-Abortion vote). LAZINESS. A NV (Not-Voting) would have been the appropriate stance (no-one could claim they were Pro-Abortion funding that a NO vote would have allowed).

Further…. just proves, IMO, my whole CINOs/PLINOs, and Pavlovian-Blue-Dogs contention. The Stupak Amendment just provided cover for them to vote for the POS which should never have happened, because…
1- (supposedly) Removing Abortion funding from it does NOT make the rest of the Bill ‘GOOD’ - as if the Abortion funding was/is the only ‘BAD’ thing in it!
2- Duplicity Votes - Setting up Duplicity Votes - the have it both way Game Politicians play to be able to say anything during Campaigns
3- Abortion funding WILL STILL OCCUR - Liberals/Democrats ALWAYS consider themselves ABOVE THE LAW and ignore them when convenient to their causes…
3A- The ‘Abortion funding exclusion’ will NOT survive the Conference/Consolidation ‘compromise’ process when it comes time to join in Conference/Committee the House and Senate Bills
3B- Liberal bureaucrats will still pay for ABORTIONS paying for them billed as something like a generic ‘Pregnancy Services’ term - or the like BS (as discussed in one of the Townhalls primers: here, here, here, here, here, and HC issues summary here, don’t recall off-hand which one)
3C- If they ALLOW it to survive into the Final Bill, to again provide cover for CINOs/PLINOs, and Pavlovian-Blue-Dogs Democrats (and maybe a few Republicans) to vote for it under Pro-Life grounds (and again, see #1), it will be stripped on a Saturday Late night, or reversed by language stuffed into the middle of some other Bill, otherwise removed undercover of the night, at a later date. Haven’t people learned anything?!?!? LIBERAL INCREMENTAL-ISM at its most obvious yet again!!!!
4- HHS Sect. under these Bills has SOLE DISCRETION and job of putting forth the “minimal standards” qualification and can/will put Abortion funding back in by fiat. — I hear some say that would provide a conflict! Democrats DO NOT CARE and will invoke only those portions of Law that suits their moving their agenda forward and ignoring all else!
5- Liberal Judge Activists — no more needs saying on that one!

as a whole aside from the HC Bill, just about Abortion in general…
Kathy Ireland/Abortion- Kathy Ireland/Abortion- Kathy Ireland: best anti-abortion comments ever made and more on her words here. Huckabee had a former Planned Parenthood worker explain how/why she quit after being involved in a Sonogram assisted Abortion and seeing the CHILD fight for its Life during the process!

“Who cares if they would have indeed found some other form of coverage and/or PAYOFF to bribe them to vote for 3296, they should have forced them to go for those other methods and continued to expose the horse-trading and manipulation.”

We should care, because in our scenario, we would have gotten the bill, without Stupak. That would have been a worse outcome.

Now we have a poison pill neatly inserted and set to act on both sides of the Dem divide. Either it’s in and Liberals are forced to choose. Or its out and Blue Dogs are forced to choose. Your strategy would have left no choices on final passage for the Dems, assuming the bill gets out of the Senate.

Second guessing GOP voting strategy on Stupak is watching Vizzini, in The Princess Bride, as he tries to divine which cup is poisoned.

If the GOP members all voted against Stupak Saturday, Pelosi would have gotten her members to change their votes to yes so that the amendment would pass and give the pro-life Dems cover to vote for the bill.

Now, if the bill comes out of conference without the Stupak language in it, then there is a good chance it dies in the House, as I am sure there are at least 3 of the pro-life Dems who would vote against it on those grounds. However, if it comes out of conference without the Stupak language AND without a public option, then all bets are off, because it will lose some pro-life Dems, but pick-up some blue-dog Dems.

This vote came down to two or three votes, and I think it’s very likely that public funding of abortions would have shifted those Democrat votes. It was certainly worth the gamble, this a huge defeat, in my opinion. Had this vote failed after the Democrat wipe-out in Virginia and New Jersey, I think health care reform would have been dead.

Universal Health Care is the the ultimate prize for liberals that will be a permanent game changer. Defeating Universal Health Care is priority number one for conservatives, everything else is secondary. If we have to gamble something like taxpayer funded abortions, so be it. At the end of the day, I can guarantee you the courts or liberal legislators will eventually find some way to make abortions publicly funded if government is responsible for health care. It will probably be indirectly, like giving block grants to states who then give it to places like Planned Parenthood for birth control and “other” services. Once you let government in, it’s already too late. Universal health care = taxpayer funded abortions. I don’t care what it says in the bill, it will eventually happen anyway.

What concerns me is I think some social conservatives are going to make abortion THE issue of this debate, and I feel like that’s exactly what happened here, causing us to lose an important vote. They were so obsessed with making sure this language was put into the bill to make a symbolic stand instead of effectively using it to kill this monstrosity.

I’m sorry if this offends people, but if socialized medicine becomes law, I really could care less about the issue of public financing of abortions. I won’t take any solace in telling myself, “well, at least abortions are still privately funded.”

Universal Health Care is “game over” for the conservative movement. No country that has passed universal health care has ever repealed it.

First we were told by those in the know this would never pass the House, and now we’re being told it will never pass the Senate. Conservatives are also saying quite confidently, “We’ll repeal it if it does pass once we regain the majority.” To repeal this we’ll need at least 60 votes in the Senate, a majority in the House, and the White House. I haven’t seen that in my lifetime.

If there’s even a chance we can find a way to defeat this, it’s a risk worth taking. Some parts of the conservative constituency may be upset, but we need to unite and make sacrifices for the greater good in order to kill this. I would hope that is one thing that can unite us, but after this vote, I’m not so sure.

But the GOP must show a lot more fight, and a lot more outrage, over what’s going on here. They should offer no ammendments of their own, announce that this whole bill is a moral, fiscal, legal and constitutional abomination, and they will do nothing to try to “nice” it up a little with ammendments.

Their rhetoric has been tepid. That’s how it came across to me on Saturday night. Sure it’s got lots of new bureaucracy, sure it costs a lot, and they said that. But this bill is a total disaster, a re-structuring of our way of life, and I’m not sure the Republican leadership even yet gets that. They seem to think this is still just a bill they disagree with; they don’t understand the stakes involved.

The only anger, the only real passion I saw was from the Democrats. What’s wrong with our guys? Why can’t they muster up a little righteous indignation about this whole process? Why aren’t they angry, and why aren’t they showing it?

Also, during the last-minute motion the Republicans offered on tort reform, one the Republicans stood up and announced she didn’t want to hear any accusations that this was just an attempt to kill the bill. Excuse me, but that’s precisely what the Republicans should be doing, and they should be saying that forthrightly, and making sure that people know that’s exactly what they’re trying to do. They should be making no bones about the fact they are doing it, and for one moment to be defensive about doing it is unconscionable. It shows just how timid our leadership is, and how clearly they just don’t get it.