ObamaCare is dead and very unpopular with 58% opposing the current bill before Congress, but that does not stop the One from calling, what even CBS is admitting, a faux bi-partisan meeting with the GOP in a last ditch attempt to salvage his failing plan. Obama seems to understand how Newton’s first law of motion applies to legislation; legislation in motion will remain in motion and legislation at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an external force. As ObamaCare is most certainly at rest and dead, Obama has nothing to lose and the GOP has nothing to gain by this farcical display. To flip it around, Obama has everything to gain and the GOP has everything to lose by attending the so-called healthcare summit.

Attend or not attend, the liberal media will spin the story in Obama’s favor, so again – why the hell is the GOP leadership committing such a explicit act of stupidity? ObamaCare is treading water and the GOP is about to throw it a lifeline. From the CBS story:

What these presidential appeals for bipartisanship always mean is: do it my way.

(AP)Mr. Obama said he “won’t hesitate to embrace a good idea from my friends in the minority party.” But he wants his way. He wants his energy policy enacted along with his jobs bill, his financial regulatory reform and his health care plan.

And if the opposition continues to block his objectives, he said he “won’t hesitate to condemn what I consider to be obstinacy that’s rooted not in substantive disagreement but in political expedience.”

When a sitting president calls for bipartisanship by the opposition – he really means surrender. And if they block his proposals, its “obstinacy” and not political views they hold as strongly as he holds his.

So my first instinct is to state that attending the summit, if ObamaCare subsequently passes, the GOP attendance will be scored by the grassroots of this country as a vote for ObamaCare. As Representative Eric Cantor already committed to attending, the GOP better pray that Obama does not walk circles around them as he did recently during the Republican retreat in Baltimore:

This wasn’t supposed to be televised, incidentally, but both sides agreed to it at the last minute in the name of showing the public how bipartisan they are. The GOP figured it’d give them a platform to prove that they actually do have policy ideas of their own, but I think the format ended up benefiting Obama more than them. He was on camera the whole time; he did most of the talking; he got to show that he’s perfectly capable of extemporaneous debate even with multiple prepared challengers lobbing questions. (Which should have been clear after 20+ debates in 2008, but the TOTUS jokes have taken on a life of their own.) Even conservatives I follow on Twitter were saying that he seemed more appealing in this format than in his thousand speeches last year. Who knows? Maybe that means we’ll see more of this.

Update: Not surprisingly, White House aides tell HuffPo they’re ecstatic with how things went while GOP aides tell NBC it was probably a mistake to let the cameras roll. Oh well.

Prior to Representative Cantor’s foolish committal to attend the One’s Hail Marry summit, I was quite pleased to read the letter from House Republican Leader John Boehner and Rep. Cantor (House Republican Whip) to Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel:

Washington, Feb 8 –

February 8, 2010

The Honorable Rahm Emanuel
Chief of Staff
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Emanuel:

We welcome President Obama’s announcement of forthcoming bipartisan health care talks. In fact, you may remember that last May, Republicans asked President Obama to hold bipartisan discussions on health care in an attempt to find common ground, but he declined and instead chose to work with only Democrats.

Since then, the President has given dozens of speeches on health care reform, operating under the premise that the more the American people learn about his plan, the more they will come to like it. Just the opposite has occurred: a majority of Americans oppose the House and Senate health care bills and want them scrapped so we can start over with a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses. Just as important, scrapping the House and Senate health care bills would help end the uncertainty they are creating for workers and businesses and thus strengthen our shared commitment to focusing on creating jobs.

Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over so that we can develop a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people? Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today that the President is “absolutely not” resetting the legislative process for health care. If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate.

Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan way, does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation? As the President has noted recently, Democrats continue to hold large majorities in the House and Senate, which means they can attempt to pass a health care bill at any time through the reconciliation process. Eliminating the possibility of reconciliation would represent an important show of good faith to Republicans and the American people.

If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand? Our ability to move forward in a bipartisan way through this discussion rests on openness and transparency.

Will the President include in this discussion congressional Democrats who have opposed the House and Senate health care bills? This bipartisan discussion should reflect the bipartisan opposition to both the House bill and the kickbacks and sweetheart deals in the Senate bill.

Will the President be inviting officials and lawmakers from the states to participate in this discussion? As you may know, legislation has been introduced in at least 36 state legislatures, similar to the proposal just passed by the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate, providing that no individual may be compelled to purchase health insurance. Additionally, governors of both parties have raised concerns about the additional costs that will be passed along to states under both the House and Senate bills.

The President has also mentioned his commitment to have “experts” participate in health care discussions. Will the Feb. 25 discussion involve such “experts?” Will those experts include the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who have determined that the both the House and Senate health care bill raise costs – just the opposite of their intended effect – and jeopardize seniors’ access to high-quality care by imposing massive Medicare cuts? Will those experts include the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which has stated that the GOP alternative would reduce premiums by up to 10 percent? Also, will Republicans be permitted to invite health care experts to participate?

Finally, as you know, this is the first televised White House health care meeting involving the President since last March. Many health care meetings of the closed-door variety have been held at the White House since then, including one last month where a sweetheart deal was worked out with union leaders. Will the special interest groups that the Obama Administration has cut deals with be included in this televised discussion?

Of course, Americans have been dismayed by the fact that the President has broken his own pledge to hold televised health care talks. We can only hope this televised discussion is the beginning, not the end, of attempting to correct that mistake. Will the President require that any and all future health care discussions, including those held on Capitol Hill, meet this common-sense standard of openness and transparency?

Your answers to these critical questions will help determine whether this will be a truly open, bipartisan discussion or merely an intramural exercise before Democrats attempt to jam through a job-killing health care bill that the American people can’t afford and don’t support. ‘Bipartisanship’ is not writing proposals of your own behind closed doors, then unveiling them and demanding Republican support. Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means.

These questions are also designed to try and make sense of the widening gap between the President’s rhetoric on bipartisanship and the reality. We cannot help but notice that each of the President’s recent bipartisan overtures has been coupled with harsh, misleading partisan attacks.

For instance, the President decries Republican ‘obstruction’ when it was Republicans who first proposed bipartisan health care talks last May. The President says Republicans are ‘sitting on the sidelines’ just days after holding up our health care alternative and reading from it word for word. The President has every right to use his bully pulpit as he sees fit, but this is the kind of credibility gap that has the American people so fed up with business as usual in Washington.

We look forward to receiving your answers and continuing to discuss ways we can move forward in a bipartisan manner to address the challenges facing the American people.

Sincerely,

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)

I have also read Gibbs sorry excuse for a rebuttal to the Boehner and Cantor letter. Gibbs letter is proof positive they other side is bankrupt of ideas and is rehashing the same old tired rhetoric. It also shows they smack of desperation and have nothing substantial to say. Gibbs basically channeled Obama’s typical generalites (see page 2 of the Politico story).

By sending this letter and then accepting the invitation, it’s time to hold the feet of the GOP to the fire. They asked for it, and now its time to pay the piper. If the GOP wishes to continue to forge and nurture the relationship it has enjoyed with grassroots organizations and voters across this country, then it is time to step up to the plate and prove your worthiness. Therefore, I submit the following if ObamaCare passes subsequent to the meeting (the following scores apply to the GOP):

• The meeting will take place at a round table with no teleprompters allowed. If this agreement is not accepted the meeting is off. Failure to secure this agreement prior to the meeting will be scored as a vote for ObamaCare.
• The President and Democrats in both Houses have already said they will not start over. More to the point a Politico story states that “Obama hopes to walk into the Feb. 25 summit with an agreement in hand between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a final Democratic bill, so they can move ahead with a reform package after the sit-down.” The GOP must make this an issue and call out the President on the false premise of the entire event. If agreement is reached on a final bill, what is the purpose of the meeting? Where is the bi-partisanship if the bill was agreed to a priori to the event? Failure to do so will be scored as a vote for ObamaCare.
• The President stated that reconciliation will not be taken off the table. As this amounts to shoving an unpopular bill down American’s throats and trampling on minority rights in the Senate, the entire premise of the summit is again called into question and the President’s real agenda for the meeting exposed. The GOP must challenge the President on this point. Failure to do so will be scored as a vote for ObamaCare.
• The GOP must insist they be able to invite House Democrats opposed to the measure. If they are not allowed to do so, the meeting is over. Failure of the GOP to insist upon this provision will be scored as a vote for ObamaCare.
• The GOP must be allowed to invite officials and lawmakers from those states that has passed or are working on passing legislation/resolutions challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Failure of the GOP to insist upon this provision will be scored as a vote for ObamaCare.
• The GOP must be allowed to invite their own experts, including but not limited to actuaries from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and members from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Failure of the GOP to insist upon this provision will be scored as a vote for ObamaCare

Again, whether the GOP attends or not, the liberal media are going to spin, spin, spin. This “summit” is a disaster in the making; we have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have dug a deep hole, jumped in and are now extending their hands for our assistance in extricating them out of a disaster of their own making. If Republicans help revive this bill, they will lose a number of us out here in the voting world. I fear going to this summit will be a turning point.

If the Senate is going to use reconciliation, they are going to do it with or without this summit and I doubt they are going to use it, although the summit may embolden the House to pass the Senate version if Obama plays his cards right. I and many others have VERY strong reservations about this summit. The House GOP needs to think really hard and ensure the President does not use this as a platform to railroad over any real discussions. Equal time, no teleprompters, the President at a table and not lording over the event from a podium, and all the above relevant conditions met prior to the GOP accepting this offer and during the event itself.

The President wants no preconditions for good reason; the entire “summit” loses its utility if it is controlled in such a way as to force the President to address the issues related to the bill on terms not entirely of his own making. If the meeting is held, use it to highlight the flaws in the bill and remind the President why the American people do not like this bill. Bring your testosterone boys, you are going to need it. You made the promise, you wrote the letter, now it’s time to deliver. Failure to do so would be very bad….for you.

A piece of advice for the GOP: as three-quarters of independents now have a favorable view of the Tea Parties, either turn down the offer or bring your A game.

Oh, and let’s not forget that we may have a bill here that fines and imprisons people for not having insurance. I would like to see these aspects discussed if they are indeed in the bill. Also, last I heard – it’s so hard keeping up with all the changes – the current Senate bill places some type of constraint or rules requirement on future chambers to amend or repeal certain aspects of the bill. If true, I want to know the details and hear Obama’s response.

Update: It does not appear, at least to me, this is a done deal yet:

When asked by Greta Van Susteren on Fox News last night if Republicans would attend, Boehner said he was awaiting answers from the White House.

“There are a number of questions I’d like answered before I give you or the President an up or down answer,” Boehner told Fox News last night.

Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith told HUMAN EVENTS last night that they have not received a formal invitation, any details on the event or a response to their letter.

Keep up the pressure folks.

Update 2: Dr. Hunter agrees:

Now, Republicans have reverted to their old ways and appear prepared to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again. Instead of negotiating the point of departure of their own defeat, Republicans should be insisting on postponing any consideration of healthcare reform until after the new Congress convenes in 2011. This Congress has lost all legitimacy where healthcare is concerned. This is a lame duck Congress, and it is time for it to fold its wings and float on the pond in silence and inaction until the people have an opportunity to vote for a new Congress a few months hence.

So, here we go again. Hey, Republicans, heads up, ears open, eyes on the prize: Object, Obstruct and Delay any effort by the White House and congressional Democrats to revive the death march toward nationalization of healthcare. And most importantly, don’t do anything to allow RhinoCare to be resurrected from the dead.

Remember, obstructionism in defense of liberty is no vice and cooperation in pursuit of tyranny is no virtue.

This Congress is lame; don’t give it legs.

Read the whole thing.

In other news:

Porkulus II: Return of the Phony Jobs Boondoggle

WaPo/ABC poll shows Obama losing command of the issues

The Negotiations Fraud

Will the Stupid Party Blow It?

Reconciliation, the public option, and Demcare revival

Update: Nullification resolution with teeth: ResistDC: The State Authority and Anti-Racketeering Act:

If teeth is what you want, you need to go no further than Georgia. House Bill 880 (HB880), introduced by Representative Bobby Franklin, is called the “State Authority and Anti-racketeering Act.”

Unlike the many 10th Amendment Resolutions that have been introduced around the country since 2008, HB880 is legally-binding legislation…

…that state governments not only have the right to resist unconstitutional federal acts, but that, in order to protect liberty, they are “duty bound to interpose” or stand between the federal government and the people of the state.

House Bill 880 includes strong language to assert this principle:

Any actions taken by the federal government through its agents or employees that are not authorized by the Constitution of the United States are unlawful; and being unlawful, they are criminal offenses against the affected parties

This bill would make it a crime – with imprisonment for up to 30 years for each offense – for “any judicial officer, law enforcement officer, agent, or employee of the federal government, any multinational government, any international government, or any global government” to attempt to “enforce any federal, multinational, international, or global law” reserved to the State of Georgia under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.

As of this writing, the bill has had two readings in the Georgia House. Will such a strong piece of legislation go anywhere? Only time will tell. The reality, though, is this – it’s going to take some serious effort to push back against decades and decades of unconstitutional federal acts.

————————

News today at Hot Air via Townhall: Dem sources: Senate “fix” for ObamaCare could add another $300 billion to price tag; Update: Dems ready for reconciliation, says Kyl

As the saying goes – strike when the iron is hot.

Many of my friends will disagree with me this is the time or that healthcare is the issue to fight the nullification battle and start the long journey back to re-asserting states rights; it is a nasty and drawn out process, not an event as many would think. There is the beginning, a middle, and an end. The middle and the end are often, shall we say, fraught with peril. However, given the sheer level of contempt the Democrats are preparing to level at the American public it is clear the time for niceties is over. And I am not talking about the nullification of just the individual mandate which, if successful, may only serve to usher in more quickly the single-payer system, I am talking about the nullification of the entire bill. I’ll go even further and suggest that as many states as possible draft and pass legislation that would allow that state to nullify any federal law which violates state sovereignty. What I am talking about is an virtual (not literal) act of war by the states against the federal government. It would not be pretty; it would not be easy. Continuing a campaign of pressure against the federal government while steadfastly supporting state’s governors and legislators as they embark on this journey of defiance requires great skill, leadership, patience, and gumption. So get ready.

In his excellent piece A short history of the destruction of state sovereignty, a worthy read in itself, Dr. Hunter notes the following regarding the rolling back of tyrannical federal powers:

But, it won’t be simply a matter of untying the knot or walking this cat back. It is impossible to simply retrace the steps that brought the American political system to its present perilous situation; it will require courage, steadfastness, truculence, defiance and a will of iron to stand up to Washington and stand down the power of the federal government. It will be an undertaking not in principle different from but even more daunting and difficult than the Civil Rights Movement, namely reviving America and restoring liberty by overcoming oppressive government that is acting illegally and immorally with a pointed gun under the color of law.

Later, Dr. Hunter goes on to say (emphasis mine):

After spending several weeks traveling around the country speaking at grass-roots events and Tea Parties, I am impressed by the pent up anger at the federal government spilling out across the land. It is diffuse and largely unarticulated but it is real, and it is growing.

I also am impressed by the actions already taken and under consideration in several states to re-establish state prerogatives and “sovereignty”—from unilaterally withdrawing from the federal government the authority to regulate guns manufactured, sold and used solely within the confines of the state (MT & TN), to opting out of national healthcare (AZ) to consideration of refusing to be ensnarled in cap-and-trade (IN).

It is a messy, boisterous process and mass movements such as the Tea Parties frequently get it wrong in their enthusiastic assertions about what is and what is not constitutional. That said, there may be a kernel here—“state sovereignty”—around which a movement may be coalescing and the Spirit of ’98 revived.

But, the state sovereignty movement must be about more than simply unfunded federal mandates; it must go beyond making intergovernmentalism efficient and bearable; it must aim to revive genuine federalism in order to restore individual rights and personal freedom.

Certainly, to be a lasting political force, the Tea Parties need a focus rather than simply running around making noise and venting their frustrations. But time is not likely to wait for the intricate schemes and the best laid plans of man; from the sorry looks of states such as California and plans the current administration has in hand for a complete takeover of everything in sight, events may take on a life of their own.

In the not too distant future, America may face a spontaneous and violent crackup designed by no one but out of the control of anyone, followed by a backlash of severe national-government oppression and tyranny. That is why it is vital for citizens to get ahead of the curve and organize a peaceful rebellion against Washington—a restorative revolution led by the natural depository of power—the States—which were intended by the Founders to be the locus of resistance to check an oppressive and tyrannical national government.

If the states do not intervene to halt the national government’s takeover of everything and act to restore some semblance of balance to the American political system, there is a real danger that Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek’s prediction in The Road To Serfdom will come to fruition. Hayek feared that in times of turmoil and hardship, the appeal of dismantling the free-market system under the allure of central planning and the distemper of envy and fear would inevitably place society on “the road to serfdom,” which ultimately ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom.

Hayek argued that once a society progresses sufficiently far down the road to collectivism and consolidated central control, the failure of central planning would be perceived by the public as an absence of sufficient power by the national government to implement an otherwise good idea. According to Hayek, such a perception would lead the public to vote more power to the national government, and ultimately allow a “strong man” to rise to power. Once a charismatic strong man who is perceived to be capable of “getting the job done” consolidates his power, Hayek foresaw the ultimate and ineluctable descent into outright totalitarianism.

Or, America may traverse the road to serfdom via another route. Rather than a strong-man takeover, a consolidated and centralized national government may instead visit upon the American people tyranny by committee every much as destructive of economic and personal liberty as the rule of any strong man.

Although all the wounds of slavery, segregation and the Civil Rights Movement may not yet be behind us, it may be, one hopes, that they are sufficiently healed to allow a critical mass of Americans from all walks of life to join together and rejuvenate their states. To revive American liberty and restore our constitutional republic, people will have to rediscover their courage to resist the way Martin Luther King and his followers resisted. But whereas civil rights activists looked to the national government as the font of legitimacy to take down immoral and oppressive state laws, a restoration of freedom from national-government oppression will have to look to state governments as the font of legitimacy in resistance.

The Revive America Movement must begin by electing and supporting governors and state legislatures who will act with the Spirit of ‘98 in truculent and defiant resistance to Washington. It will require citizens standing shoulder to shoulder with their governors and state legislators to confront the federal government where possible, defy Uncle Sam where necessary and restore some semblance of balance to the American democracy before it is too late.

Reviving America and restoring liberty to Americans won’t be simple because we are too far down the road to serfdom for simple unwinding and backtracking. It is not self-evidently obvious what a true Restorative Revolution would look like but the civil rights movement offers a model that may be the last best hope we have before passing a point of no return.

As Redstate’s Brian Faughnan reports, Democratic pollster James Carville’s recent poll indicated just one-third of voters support ObamaCare:

Democrats are currently saying that no matter what happens in tomorrow’s Senate election, they will pass a health care rationing bill.

Now there’s some audacity for you.

I am reminded of our Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

The train of abuses has been long, and with the Brown win, President Obama is promising a combative turn. Translation: more abuses of federal power and even less attention paid to the will of the people. Therefore, it is time, in this author’s opinion, for the Tea Parties to work with state legislators and governors, standing shoulder to shoulder with them, unbending and stalwart in the battle for the freedoms and rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution. Together, state leaders and citizens must stare down the federal tyranny with an icy glare. So perilous is this journey that the path must be carefully prepared, our leaders steadfast, and our own resolve unbreakable. What of federal repercussions and our legislative preparedness to deal with them? Are each of us prepared, as in the civil rights movement, to resist in a passive-aggressive manner the abuses of the federal government with acts of civil disobedience? When will the movement reach critical mass, causing the federal powers to crumble under their own weight and lucre?

If the Senate or the House passes the current and very unpopular health care bill, especially if the process of reconciliation is used, this very well could be the tipping point, forcing our hand to take measures to ensure a federal government oblivious to the will of the public is spanked hard and spanked often until it caves to our will. As Orrin Hatch recently stated, the use of the process of reconciliation in the Senate is will lead to an all out war in that chamber. The states would not be far behind.

Already, we have seen the Democrats in the Senate vote, along party lines, to increase the debt ceiling to 14.3 trillion. Combined with the soft on terror approach of the current administration, balooning deficits, a Congress that seems hell-bent on ignoring the American public to the point of brazen arrogance and dismissal, an appology tour by nothing less than the President of the United States, a recent Executive Order by the Presidet that surrenders U.S. sovereignty to Interpol, and a host of other abuses that would fill a book, there is a growing sense that enough is enough.

It is interesting to note that many today believe the Supreme Court to be the final arbiter of all things within the borders of the United States while in fact this Court is only a check against the other two forms of the federal government, not the states. Where the Constitution is silent, the states can govern themselves.

From The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (emphasis mine):

The resolution explicitly disclaimed that the national government was the judge of its own powers. Allowing it to judge its own powers would be akin to permitting an agent, rather than the principal, to determine the breadth of the agent’s authority. The law of agency at its most basic level recognizes that an agent can act as such only subject to the consent and control of the principal to whom the agent owes a fiduciary duty (see Restatement [Second] of Agency, sec. 1). Just as A, B, and C, the partners in a business firm, decide what authority to give their agent Z, so the parties to the Constitution decide the powers of the national government. In light of such logic, Jefferson proclaimed in the resolution that “each party [to the federal compact] has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measures of redress” (Virginia Commission 1964, 144). For Jefferson, the people acting through their states — the authentic organs of government — were the final arbiters of constitutional interpretation. Jefferson feared that giving the federal government the exclusive power to interpret the Constitution through the Supreme Court would lead to arbitrary government. As John Taylor later wrote in his Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated, “a jurisdiction, limited by its own will, is an unlimited jurisdiction” ([1820] 1970, 131). With the states stripped of the power to construe the Constitution, the enforcement of constitutional limitations on the central government would be chimerical. Thus, it is not surprising that none of the convictions under the Sedition Act were appealed to the Federalist-dominated Supreme Court. The Republicans did not want to give the Court an opportunity to set a dangerous precedent.

The public in each state must ensure its state government does not fold like a bunch of cheap suits when the federal government attempts its first act of retribution – the withdrawal of state funds. While money is a very powerful weapon, the stream flows both ways. Let us not forget our resolve nor allow our leaders in each state to ignore their constitutional duty to each citizen to fight for the rights of the state against the tyranny of the federal government. Let us not waver in the face of opposition from tyrants whose own audacity places them at odds with each of us. This is the time to use federal lucre and abuse of power to grab back the rights duly possessed by the states of this country. In this, the Supreme Court holds no sway over the authority of the states. The Constitution makes this clear. So long and slow has the erosion of state authority occurred, the we forget the people of this country and their respective states wield power over the federal government – not the other way around. Time has eroded our feeling of empowerment, and like pawns on a chessboard, we feel moved by the powers that be, forgetting that it is US that moves THEM. It is time to take back that power. It is time to save the future for our children and grandchildren. It is time to put the federal government back into its proper place. The road will not be easy, but if our resolve is strong, we can have back the country our forefathers left for us.

Update 1: While not a great Ron Paul fan, the an article at the Tenth Amendment Center basically lays out the same approach as above, but offers a few more details. I found the following to be highly interesting:

There are a whole host of peaceful actions that a state government can adopt if that day comes or appears to be just over the horizon. These measures range from county sheriffs requiring that federal agents receive written permission from the sheriff before acting in their county, to setting up a Federal Tax escrow account, which could potentially de-fund unconstitutional federal activities by requiring that all federal taxes come first to the state’s Department of Revenue.

Besides state interposition, the other thing Washington would have to consider, is whether enough of their agents would actually obey orders to punish people for exercising their constitutional rights. There is a significant chance that enough of them would either publicly or privately decide in advance to ignore such orders. As the probability of this increases, it becomes more likely that Washington will not risk overplaying its hand. The reality is that Washington just doesn’t have the manpower to enforce all their unconstitutional laws if enough states choose to defy them.

Of course, it all depends on the people of the several states: ordinary people like you and I. Although I’ve discovered that there are more elected representatives at the state level who are committed to acting in a courageous and principled manner than I ever dared hope, most of their peers lack such a brave commitment. Most of them will stick their head in the sand or sit on the fence until they determine which way the wind is blowing. And so it’s our opinion, not the opinion of the American people in aggregate, but our opinion as citizens of our respective states, that will influence the decision of our state representatives to either stand tall or to kneel down and knuckle under.

Living in Texas I am particularly interested in one of the comments:

We are developing nullification legislation for Texas that might serve as a model for other states. See http://constitutionalism.blogspot.com/2010/01/cautions-for-nullification-proponents.html

Proposed Components:

1. Commission. Establish “Federal Action Review Commission” – special commission with grand jury powers to meet continuously with rotating membership drawn from a pool of legal historians and constitutional scholars, appointed by the Governor, Attorney General, or Legislative Council; empowered to review the constitutionality of congressional legislation, or federal regulations or decisions, and if it finds such legislation, regulations, or decisions to be unconstitutional, to issue an edict, with the force of law, requiring that no state or local officials, employees, or contractors cooperate in the enforcement of it, and urging state citizens to refuse to cooperate. This Commission would be established by an amendment to the Texas Constitution.

2. Structure and procedure. The Commission shall consist of 23 members, who shall serve for staggered terms of 4-8 months, drawn at random from a pool of at least 230 constitutional scholars and legal historians, who shall meet for at least one hour once a week, with a quorum of 16, and a vote of 12 required to issue an edict, based on a presumption of nonauthority and requiring strict proof of constitutionality from logic and historical evidence. It shall be open to direct complaints of the unconstitutionality of federal actions from any citizen. It shall have the power to subpoena witnesses, and its deliberations shall be secret, except that it may disclose anything in its presentments. It may authorize criminal prosecution by issuing an indictment to any person, not necessarily a lawyer, upon a finding that the court cited has jurisdiction and that evidence of guilt is sufficient for trial.

3. Penalties. State and local officials, employees, and contractors shall be duly notified in writing of such edicts within ten days and shall have twenty days to comply or be subject to termination after one written warning and a second failure to refuse to cooperate.

4. Funding. Establish a state fund to pay for legal and financial support of state citizens and officials who refuse to cooperate with unconstitutional federal statutes, regulations, or decisions, with the intention to obtain judicial decisions that support the unconstitutionality of the federal actions.

Update 2: Another reason to start the nullification movement: Reconciliation flip-flopper of the morning

Update 3: Reconciliation, the public option, and Demcare revival

UPDATE: News today at Hot Air via Townhall: Dem sources: Senate “fix” for ObamaCare could add another $300 billion to price tag; Update: Dems ready for reconciliation, says Kyl

Here is something most people don’t know: Senators already expressed their opinion that reconciliation should not be used to pass ObamaCare last year. Here is what most don’t know about the budget conference report for fiscal year ’09:

Dem leaders are looking into reconciliation, a parliamentary maneuver only requiring 51 votes, to shovel pieces of an unpopular healthcare bill through the Senate. The Senate rejected this approach to pass healthcare legislation last year TWICE (unanimously in one case and by a 79-14 margin in the second case). While provisions to require 60-votes should have been included in the Budget Conference Report that came out of the House and Senate conference on each chamber’s respective Budget Resolutions, they were not. The question is why, while the answer points to yet another duplicitous backroom decision that ignores not only the will of the entire Senate, but in today’s environment also ignores the will of the American people writ large by the voters of Massachusetts on a bill that 2/3 of the country does not want.

For a description of the United States budget process see here.

The United States House Committee on the Budget and the United States Senate Committee on the Budget are responsible for drafting budget resolutions. Following the traditional calendar, by early April both committees finalize their drafts and submit it to their respective floors for consideration and adoption.

A budget resolution, which is one form of a concurrent resolution, binds Congress, but is not a law, and so does not require the President’s signature. The budget resolution serves as a blueprint for the actual appropriation process, and provides Congress with some control over the appropriations process. No new spending authority, however, is provided until appropriation bills are enacted.

Once both houses pass the resolution, selected Representatives and Senators negotiate a conference report to reconcile differences between the House and the Senate versions. The conference report, in order to become binding, must be approved by both the House and Senate.

The federal government’s fiscal year currently begins on October 1st and ends on September 30th of the next calendar year.

So the United States House Committee on the Budget and the United States Senate Committee on the Budget each create a Budget Resolution for amending and voting by the respective chambers. This is followed by a selection of conferees by each chamber who will then meet to hash out a single Budget Conference Report that each chamber will subsequently vote on.

Dr. Hunter, former policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and President and CEO of the Social Security Institute writes the following:

The only way to defeat Reconciliation is to be prepared at a moment’s notice to pivot from a localized strategy precisely tailored to threaten targeted Democrats’ weak spots to a national campaign aimed not at the substance of ObamaCare so much as the fairness and political prudence of jamming something as enormous and contentious as healthcare reform down the throats of the American people with fewer than a majority of sitting Senators voting in favor of it. The strategy to defeat Reconciliation must be aimed at the Democratic Party as a whole questioning its judgment, prudence, fairness and wisdom. The task at this point will be to characterize Reconciliation as political thuggery, totally unacceptable in the American democratic process; to raise such national outrage at the strong-arm tactics of Reconciliation that Democrats understand the American People will not tolerate it and will throw them out of office at the first opportunity.

Here is a suggested framework on which to build a strategy against Reconciliation:

Senator Reid threatens to tie dissenting Senators’ hands behind their backs with procedural restrictions on amendments, gag them with strict limits on debate and pummel the long tradition of minority rights in the U.S. Senate by ramming ObamaCare through the Senate with a bare majority or even with fewer than a minimum 51 votes of sitting Senators, if necessary, by having Vice President Biden break a 50-50 tie.

The parliamentary maneuver Senator Reid would use to pass ObamaCare by less than a majority vote of sitting Senators is known as “Reconciliation.” Reconciliation is an extraordinary budgetary procedure designed specifically to ensure passage of an annual budget and avoid a stalemate leading to a complete shutdown of the federal government. Reconciliation was not designed and never intended to circumvent regular order in the Senate to ram through controversial and far-reaching legislation such as healthcare “reform.”

Democratic Senator Robert C. Byrd, one of the authors of the Reconciliation procedure and foremost authority on the history of Senate rules and procedure describes what happens under Reconciliation this way:

“Under reconciliation’s gag rule there are twenty hours of debate or less if time is yielded back, and little or no opportunity to amend.”

This is political thuggery—political assault and battery upon the American People pure and simple. Senator Byrd best expresses why using Reconciliation to jam ObamaCare down America’s throat degrades the U.S. Senate and violates the spirit of our system of checks and balances:

“Using reconciliation to ram through complicated, far-reaching legislation is an abuse of the budget process…With critical matters such as a massive revamping of our health care system which will impact the lives of every citizen of our great land, the Senate has a duty to debate and amend and explain in the full light of day, however long that may take, what it is we propose, and why we propose it…We must not run roughshod over minority views. A minority can be right…Ramrodding and railroading have no place when it comes to such matters as our people’s healthcare.”

That is why Senator Byrd says, “I cannot, and I will not, vote to authorize the use of the reconciliation process to expedite passage of health care reform legislation.”

What Majority Leader Reid is hiding from the American public is the fact that a huge bipartisan majority of Senators agreed with Senator Byrd, when they were writing this year’s budget resolution back in April, that Reconciliation should not be used to railroad ObamaCare through the Senate.

During deliberations on the Senate Budget Resolution earlier this year, Senator Jim DeMint introduced a point-of-order amendment that would require a 60-vote majority to pass “any bill, joint resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report that eliminates the ability of Americans to keep their health plan or their choice of doctor (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office).” The Senate approved the DeMint Amendment unanimously.

Subsequently, before the Senate Budget Resolution went to a Conference Committee where differences with the House Budget Resolution were to be worked out, DeMint offered a motion to instruct the Senate Conferees not only to insist on retaining the 60-vote provision in the final Conference Report but also to widen the scope of the provision to cover any provision and so forth that decreases the number of Americans enrolled in private health insurance while increasing the number enrolled in government-managed, rationed health care. The DeMint motion to instruct conferees to insist on the 60-vote requirement for healthcare passed the Senate by an overwhelming vote of 79 to 14.

As a matter of congressional comity, the House ordinarily would have been expected to accede to the Senate provision since it affected Senate rules that applied only to the Senate. But mysteriously the 60-vote rule was stripped from the resolution in the dead of night, behind closed doors and out of sight of the rest of the Senate and the American People. Remarkably, Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Kent Conrad, must have fallen asleep during the Conference Committee meeting because he allowed the Demint 60-vote requirement to be removed from the Budget Resolution in Conference.

Now, Senator Reid stands on the flimsy excuse that the DeMint amendments are irrelevant because they were not in the final Budget Resolution Conference Report. But make no mistake, the 60-vote requirement—which was TWICE voted for by huge, bipartisan majorities in the Senate and did not affect the House—wasn’t in the final Budget Resolution Conference Report ONLY because Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad thumbed his nose at three fourths of his colleagues and took it upon himself contrary to the will of the Senate to unceremoniously strip their 60-vote rule out of the Conference Report.

With one-sixth of the U.S. economy at stake, the Senate should insist upon abiding by its own rule, which it TWICE adopted by overwhelming bipartisan votes. Why would Senator Reid insist upon using a provision the Senate TWICE agreed should NOT be used on healthcare because they knew it wouldn’t be right to pass a bill that divides the nation into feuding factions by a slim 50 votes?

Harry Reid’s argument that he is justified in jamming ObamaCare down America’s throat because there is no rule against it—actually because one rogue Senator took it upon himself to reverse the will and judgment of the entire Senate and eliminate a rule Senators thought was right and appropriate—is the pure sophistry of a tyrant.

The question is, what justifies the Senate in violating its own cherished norms and traditions? Why does Senator Reid refuse to abide by the 60-vote rule on healthcare the Senate TWICE voted to impose on itself by huge bipartisan majorities? Why does Senator Reid ignore the authoritative judgment of fellow Democrat Robert Byrd that it would be wrong, wrong, wrong to steamroller ObamaCare through the Senate under Reconciliation?

If Senator Kent Conrad had performed his duties correctly, then reconciliation would not even be on the table. An point-of-order amendment allows a Senator to raise a point-of-order objection and require adherence to the 60-vote requirement. Remember, this passed unanimously. The instruction-to-conferees amendment which passed 79-14 is supposed to require the Senate conferees insist the 60-vote rule be included in the final Budget Conference Report. Yet it was not.

This is not and never will be a parliamentary argument. However, from a PR perspective, the Democrats can be forced into a defensive posture and answer to the American public why – why do they feel the rest of us must follow rules while they can just chose to ignore them at a whim? It is this elitist “rules for thee but not for me” attitude that turns most of us off to Washington to begin with. The spirit of the 60-vote rule and minority rights they voted on in 2009 will not just disappear next year. The 2010 Budget Resolution from the Senate must contain the point-of-order amendment and the motion to instruct the Senate conferees that were stripped out the final Budget Conference report in 2009, effectively neutering the will the Senate. To allow this to continue in order to pass extremely unpopular legislation would be just one other example of elitists making up the rules and using disingenuous tactics to secure their ability to trample the will of the governed. We must insist they follow their own rules now as well as later in the next fiscal year. Just because somebody conveniently forgot to insist on the will of the Senate during conference with the House is no excuse not to adhere to self-imposed rules. Now is the time to display qualities of discipline and character – especially now. No more games, not more hiding, and no more dishonesty.

The American people have spoken. They are sick and tired of backroom deals, late night votes, broken promises of transparency, and now to top it all off the Democrats in the Senate are talking about using a procedure they agreed would not be used while allowing that will to be usurped by a committee chairman asleep at the wheel.

Fairness, abiding by the rules. Wake up Senator Reid – Americans hate backroom deals – they feed into the narrative of sneaky, shadowy, elitist weasels that is costing your party dearly and will continue to do so. The fact remains that it was the will of the Senate that reconciliation be taken off the table for this fiscal year and subsequently that will was ignored in conference. However, ignoring the will of a legislative body in a conference report does not nullify that will. A declaration cannot be summarily dismissed because somebody or some group decided not to champion a resolution even when instructed by a vote of 79-14 in the to do so. The Democrats, who have been backroom dealing and skulking in the shadows since this thing began, are about to ignore their own will if they follow through with reconciliation.

One is only as good as their word. Any Democratic Senator who now attempts to use this procedural trickery may be called a great asset by their progressive allies – maybe – but the rest of America will make it clear they were off by two letters and make their will known at the ballot box.

To pass healthcare legislation via this procedural bypass of minority rights, therefore impacting over 1/6 of our economy, would be the very definition of duplicity. It would be the very definition of audacity.

Related:

Breaking: Lincoln will oppose reconciliation

ObamaCare: Night of the Living Dead Bill

Reconciliation flip-flopper of the morning

Oh my: GOP ready to boycott ObamaCare summit?

From the American Spectator:

The Senate Republican leadership believes that the parliamentarian allowed Democrats to violate the rules of the Senate by allowing Sen. Bernie Sanders to cut off the reading of his single-payer proposal.

When an amendment is introduced, it has to be read on the Senate floor unless the rest of the Senate agrees to cut off the reading, and typically, the requirement is waived through “unanimous consent.” Yet today, Sen. Tom Coburn insisted that Sanders’ 767 page bill be read on the Senate floor, which was on pace to take more than 12 hours.

But about three hours into the reading, Sanders withdrew his amendment, and this stopped the reading of the bill — even without unanimous consent.

“In allowing Sanders to do that, it appears the parliamentarian has broken the standing rules of the Senate,” a Republican aide emails. “We’re looking into the implications of this and working on where to go from here.”

Here is the relevant part of Riddick’s Senate Procedure, which the GOP believes Democrats have violated, emphasis was in the email:

Reading: Under Rule XV, paragraph 1, and Senate precedents, an amendment shall be read by the Clerk before it is up for consideration or before the same shall be debated unless a request to waive the reading is granted; in practice that includes an ordinary amendment or an amendment in the nature of a substitute, the reading of which may not be dispensed with except by unanimous consent, and if the request is denied the amendment must be read and further interruptions are not in order; interruptions of the reading of an amendment that has been proposed are not in order, even for the purpose of proposing a substitute amendment to a committee amendment which is being read. When an amendment is offered the regular order is its reading, and unanimous consent is required to call off the reading.” (Riddick’s Senate Procedure, P.43-44)

“It looks like there’s nothing the Democrats aren’t prepared to do to jam this unpopular health care bill down the throats of the American public,” the aide writes.

Senate Parliamentarians – in this case Alan Frumin – are the cornerstone of tradition in the Senate and are supposed to be unwaveringly non-partisan. By acting in such a partisan manner Alan Frumin has denigrated the institution itself and no amount of defense on his part will suffice – he has to go. If it was found that Reid or any other Democratic Senator pressured Frumin to act in this manner then it is obvious the Democrats will ignore even the rules of the Senate to force-feed healthcare down the throats of an unwilling public.

Tea Party Support’s Senate insider has informed us that Republicans are mad as hell and are not going to take this lying down. Burn up the Senate phone lines and demand of Democrats that every single amendment and the bill itself be read before proceeding on healthcare. The American people deserve no less and this the snake oil of manufactured urgency is not selling well here on mainstreet.

Related:

Coburn fires warning shot across Senate Democrats’ bow; Update: DeMint joins Coburn, video statement added; Update: DeMint threatens to do the same to entire bill

It is tiring writing about the complete lack of strategic thinking by the Senate GOP. Why they are unwilling to vote strategically on ObamaCare is a mystery to me. That latest casualty of a bunch of strategical dinosaurs is the rejection of the Dorgan amendment which would have allowed the importation of low cost drugs.

Before proceeding, one of the best primers on Unanimous Consent agreements requiring 60 votes can be found here. If one is confused by the procedural descriptions in the email I quote below from Dr. Larry Hunter, the gist of the matter is this: there is a procedural hurdle that can delay debate in the Senate on healthcare called the removal of Unanimous Consent. Below I link to a post on this site which goes into more detail. This tactic would effectively slow down and ultimately block ObamaCare from passage. The typical Republican excuse of not wanting to be labeled the “party of no” is also addressed.

Per an email I received from Dr. Larry Hunter (some editorial changes were made to translate from email shorthands to a more formal presentation):

Had the Dorgan re-importation amendment been adopted, it would have blown up the deal with Pharmaceuticals. This would have been another huge poison pill on top of the abortion poison pill that remains in the current Senate bill. Add on top the recent “public option/Medicare expansion” problem and ObamaCare would have been getting very heavy and taking on water.

The Republicans made several mistakes. First, they agreed to requiring 60 votes for the amendment to pass. But then, that was part of the original bigger problem in which they agreed to do everything by Unanimous Consent including making all amendments pass the 60-vote hurdle. Instead, they should have not agreed to any Unanimous Consents and filibustered every amendment, forcing Reid to file cloture, burn time and get 60 votes to shut off debate.

On the Dorgan amendment in particular, Republicans should have recognized the perfect opportunity to vote strategically, pass the amendment and put the poison pill in the bill. The amendment failed on a vote of 51 – 48, because it failed to get 60 votes. Here is how the vote broke down: 27 Democrats, 23 Republicans and 1 Independent voted in favor of Dorgan — 30 Democrats, 17 Republicans and 1 Independent voted no. Had but 9 of those 17 Republicans voted in favor of the amendment, it would have passed and the poison pill would have been in the bill and it would have punished Pharmaceuticals big time for selling out to Obama.

Better yet, Republicans should have never agreed to Unanimous Consent to begin with; forced Reid to file for cloture and then all vote no on Cloture. The Democrats would have been stuck between a rock and a hard place: Opponents of the Dorgan amendment would not want to invoke cloture because if they moved to a vote on the amendment itself, it would have passed with 51 votes; but had the opponents prevented cloture from being invoked, the Senate would have remained stuck on the Dorgan amendment and the Reid Bill could not have proceeded forward. You see, had the Republicans had their wits and guts about them, they could have tied the Senate up in knots and made life very, very difficult for Reid et al, and perhaps have weighted the bill down so much that it would have sunk of its own weight.

Once again, the GOP passed up the chance to be the party of no, which is why they poll lower than a generic Tea Party candidate. The American public does not want this bill, so being the party of no when it comes to this legislative boondoggle should make sense – to a sensible person – but then we are talking about the Senate GOP leadership and many of the GOP Senators themselves whose strategy is basically a non-strategy of being hands-off.

As the Tea Parties are the party of no, you would think the Senate GOP would pick up on the obvious and switch strategies. As explained here ObamaCare should be procedurally blocked at every turn, a fact even RNC Michael Steele is picking up on.

Next we have the pro-life movement whose complete lack of understanding of Senate strategy is going to bite them in the end. Make no mistake that their hero right now – Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) – is acting the part of Judas to the movement. In the end, through manager amendments, make no mistake that Nelson will get the language he needs to provide him coverage, but he language will be so obscure that, with the government running healthcare abortion will be covered, probably sooner rather than later. This is how DC works. By improving the bill you help guarantee its passage. Read The Endgame Strategy To Kill ObamaCare – Lessons From The House Bill and Killing ObamaCare In The Senate – The Need For Strategic Voting. From the later post:

The Republicans knew full well Pelosi’s plan but voted in the name of political expediency to include the Stupak amendment, all but guaranteeing the passage of healthcare legislation in the House. So twisted is the current legislative process that if the general public were truly aware of the posturing and cowardice of our so-called leaders it would sicken them. As Dr. Larry Hunter wrote to me in an email:

If you haven’t already figured it out, most everything that goes on inside Washington is pure posturing and self-serving. Most of these jokers would rather have the issue to raise funds on than win the battle. I knew asking people to engage in strategic voting would be a heavy lift, and it looks like it is going to be beyond them.

The reason politicians are able to pull off these shenanigans is the complete ignorance of many, but not all, of the public to the importance of strategic voting and our unwillingness to hold accountable those whose interests are self-serving, thereby aiding the enemy in the full-scale assault on our liberties and ultimately destroying this country. We must be willing to hold them accountable for their cowardice. Even more guilty are the tools of the Democrats, the Family Research Council, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans United for Life, and National Right to Life Committee. The reader may be shocked to read these groups are unwitting tools of the Democrats, but a useful idiot is a tool until they decide to quit being useful idiots.

Which is why I am frustrated this morning to read Stop the abortion mandate:

To get the latest breaking news from our nation’s capital, you are invited to participate in a LIVE webcast event on Tuesday, December 15, at 9 PM Eastern (6 PM Pacific, 7 PM Mountain, 8 PM Central.)

The event will be approximately one hour long. If you have access to the Internet — even with a dial-up connection — you can listen to the live webcast audio and ask questions.

During this important nationwide event, you will discover:

* The LATEST UPDATES straight from our nation’s capital…
* The shocking implications of the bill that the abortion industry is trying to ram through the United States Senate RIGHT NOW…
* Why respected leaders, national organizations, and pro-life people are joining together in record numbers to BLOCK this attempted power-grab…
* How YOU can make a difference at this crucial moment…
*… And much more!

We have met the enemy – and he is us.

Erick Erickson of Redstate is reporting the Senate Democrats are on the verge of a healthcare deal – a deal which would expose McConnell’s public strategy of holding 40 Republicans and finding 1 or more Democrats as flawed in the extreme. Add to this equation the behind-the-scenes fact that McConnell’s strategy is to use ObamaCare’s passage as a catalyst to increase GOP gains in the Senate and you have the ingredients for a complete GOP meltdown next year.

Given the fact that a it doesn’t take 40 Republicans to succeed in stopping the Reid Bill; it doesn’t take 20; it only takes one Republican to object each time Harry Reid propounds a unanimous consent agreement to rush another amendment through the process, McConnell has shown himself to intellectually challenged. The GOP strategy will not stop ObamaCare as the Redstate story makes plainly clear. Therefore, only one option remains – throw up every procedural block in the book to slow down ObamaCare, for if it passes McConnell and the rest of the GOP, with the exception of Senator Jim DeMint who stands alone in standing up for this country, will have succeeded in pushing the themselves and the rest of the GOP over a cliff and pulling the country along with them.

RNC Michael Steele gets the message and fiscal conservatives applaud him for recognizing how McConnells’ strategy is bad for the country and a nightmare in the making for the GOP. Last week CBS reported that RNC leader Michael Steele sent a memo to the Senate GOP telling them to pull out all the stops and use every trick in the book to stop ObamaCare. What screw is loose in McConnell’s head? The Senate GOP should do their job and defend this country. This is and always has been warfare and wars are won by engaging the enemy, not running from them of prostrating oneself before them. This is the very definition of impotence. What the GOP leadership needs now is a large canister of mental Viagra.

Today is the day folks – call your Republican Senator and burn up the phone lines, or send them an email. Inundate them with one clear message: “Let ObamaCare pass and we will abandon you – in droves”.

What McConnell fails to realize that we live in an age where information flies at speeds he can’t even begin to comprehend. With blogs, social networks, and events like the National Conservative Symposium and the technology that will be brought to bear by Tea Party Support, it will not be long before his treachery is household knowledge and his dreams of a GOP tidal wave dissipate before his eyes. Watch yourself Senator.

The time for wobbly and treacherous strategies is over. Listen now our join many of us in the unemployment line. To the Senate GOP I say this – do not follow McConnell. Sell us out and we vote you out. Period.

Get this story out on the social networks. Email it to all your friends. Now is the time for action for time is indeed short.

Related:

Democrats Play Hardball with Their Own

If the Tea-Party/Grass-Roots movement is for real it will make its bones right now by pledging to throw out of office any Republican Senator who fails to object, obstruct and fight to kill the Reid Bill by any parliamentary means available to them—with no possibility of a commutation of sentence before they next stand for reelection regardless of how they try to atone for their mortal sin between now and then.

Nobody says it better than Dr. Hunter: YES, WE WANT NO OBAMA – CARE:

Unless Republicans become galvanized to actively obstruct the Reid Bill, our guess is Democrats will get their game together at last and push a skinnied-down version of ObamaCare through the Senate by year’s end. What a shame that will be. And, far from redounding to the electoral benefit of Republicans as the Senate GOP Leadership seems to calculate, it likely will result in conservative activists staying home from the polls in droves next November.

Code Red Rally in D.C. today; Update: What will Nelson’s payoff be?; MoveOn to hold counter-protest

ObamaCare: the not-unexpected cave-in on the public option

Breaking: Lieberman wins, Senate drops Medicare buy-in

CBO confirms ObamaCare is a takeover of the health insurance industry

How much is America worth?: Dems Offer Nelson up to $500 million in Earmarks to Vote Yes. So that’s how much the Democrats think America is worth. Going once, going twice….sold! For $500 million dollars. I guess with the Senate GOP doing nothing about it equates to their price for America being, well, nothing.

I would like to bring to your attention an important effort by a Tea Party organization to take a quantum step forward in systematizing grassroots efforts.

Dr. Larry Hunter, former policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and current President and CEO of the Social Security Institute had this to say about Tea Party Support (TPS): “I know all the people involved, and I do believe this is the cream of the crop. If we have an opportunity to take on MoveOn.org, this is probably our best bet… this one, I believe, is worth exploring.”

Tea Party Support provides a range of services and training to the tea party, 9-12 and other like-minded groups nationwide. Organizational services; management training; secure, encrypted email systems; web, video and professional voice over services are all available to TPS members. Through the slicing and dicing of a database of over 280 million registered voters, very concentrated pressure, fundraising, and information campaigns are possible. Comparing the Social Security Death Index with the database of registered voters will help put an end to one form of voter fraud – that of “ghost” voters. The goal of TPS is not to replace existing grassroots organizations, but rather provide the resources and tools to allow Tea Parties, 9/12, and like-minded groups access to communications and database technology, as well as training and insider information directly from Senate and House Cloakrooms. It is through the work of TPS, Dr. Larry Hunter, and Senate insiders that information concerning how to defeat ObamaCare through strategic voting came to public attention – and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The operating system, database software, and servers are state of the art and can be found in 911 call centers and airline reservations centers nationwide. TPS utilizes Hewlett-Packards’ Multi-Programming Executive operating system. A quick survey of companies which use this operating system can be found at OpenMPE and reads as a who’s who of industrial and financial giants, including JP Morgan Chase.

One of the key projects of Tea Party Support is the National Conservative Symposium. It will be held in San Antonio, Texas, January 22-24, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort. The symposium will bring together conservative grass-roots leaders and community organizers from across America at one of the nation’s premiere resorts for a weekend of intense discussion, education and training. The objective of the Symposium is to inspire and empower conservative activists to take back their political party and to take the country back to constitutional governance and fiscal responsibility by organizing for political action in their local communities and then projecting their voice and actions all the way to Washington, DC.

In breakout sessions and special training seminars, attendees also will hear from a variety of experts and be exposed to the latest techniques and methods of networking and grass-roots organizing, including discussions of the proper way to contact neighbors and discuss issues. Attendees also will have a chance to learn about and get hands-on experience with cutting edge technology, and they will gain access to data-rich information systems heretofore unavailable to local grass-roots organizations. They will also be trained as poll watchers and to volunteer as election officials where possible.

The National Conservative Symposium is the first venture of this type, designed to inform, train and inspire conservatives who share a common belief in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the role our Founding Fathers played in drafting these core documents.

The Symposium will go beyond inspiration and raising expectations. It will provide attendees the tools and strategy for liberty that will enable grass-roots leaders and organizers to launch their organizations on a course to success when they return home.

One of the most important value-added services of TPS is what is being called the Tea Party Cloakroom. The Cloakroom will be a special limited access section of the TPS website for members only. The idea is to provide grassroots leaders and organizers access to real time information on what is going on in the House and Senate, including committee activity, floor activity, upcoming actions on bills and resolutions, amendments and so forth. There will be commentary and analysis to clue people in on what’s happening with a special focus on strategy, namely which members need pressure which then can be translated quickly into grassroots action. The site will educate users on Senate and House strategies to defeat pending legislation that can then be communicated by the leaders to the grassroots as needed. The Cloakroom website will be run by two or more former congressional staffers. They will be housed a block away from the RNC headquarters and will also be able to update the site via an iPhone application from within the House and Senate. The former staffers will be chosen with an eye not only to their ideology but also their knowledge of how the system works and most importantly the relationships they have to get immediate access to what is going on in real time and how it ties in with long term strategic goals.

Tea Party Support will also be starting to score key-votes for particular legislation in the Senate and informing Senators of the definition how each key-vote will be scored by the grassroots.

During recent discussions with conservative groups on the Hill, Dr. Hunter reported that excitement about TPS is palpable and building. This is not an incremental change to the Tea Party Movement, but an order of magnitude value-add to all Tea Parties, 9/12, and like-minded groups.

My search for a group that can provide the type of access, information, and tools to aligned partnerships is over. Each grassroots organization will now have access to both overall strategy to defeat certain legislation as well as real-time updates from inside the cloakrooms where deals are struck behind our backs – and each group can use this information as they see fit. Tea Party Support is just that – a support organization for each grassroots group that wishes to utilize their unique infrastructure and information.

Tea Party Support is seeking donations from concerned citizens and activists. From the cost of servers, communications technology such as primary rate interfaces (PRIs) and high speed DS3′s, voter-rolls for every state at the precinct level, database programming, the design and staffing of the cloakroom – everything needed to assist TPS in allowing existing grassroots organizations access to the type of value-added services needed to turn the entire grassroots movement into what it is meant to be – the largest lobby and special interest group in the entire country with the largest clientele; the American people. It is our turn to have the power at our fingertips. Consider a single donation or a recurring donation (as low as $1/month) and help take this country back.

What else can you do to help? Use the ShareThis button at the bottom of this post to blast this information to the social networks or email it to a friend, or just email the following TinyUrl link to all you friends and family: http://tinyurl.com/yj9dgfp. Our battle will be won or lost based upon our ability to use and gather information, communicate that information, and make use of strategic directives from trusted legislative insiders. Which brings me to my next post coming soon. How we can help Senator Jim DeMint derail ObamaCare by demanding that other Republicans in the Senate stop the backroom deals with Democrats and selling out our country. Stay tuned.

To understand how spineless our so-called representatives on the hill are, read this. Only by reading how Pelosi utilized the Stupak amendment to stop federally funded abortion to guarantee the passage of the healtcare bill in the House can the reader really begin to appreciate the use of strategic voting and how it can be used in the Senate to defeat ObamaCare. Dr. Hunter provides a very useful analysis of the Stupak amendment and its strategic use by the liberals and combines it with very useful insights from Rush Limbaugh. We ignore this at our own peril.

The rabbit hole of depravity inside the beltway and how politicians game the system in their own self-interest to the detriment of the country is an education in itself. It is left to us, the grassroots, and real conservative leaders to pressure Senators to make this an issue. The reader should not be surprised that some of our most prized and honored Washington conservative organizations and individuals would rather have an issue at their disposal to raise funds than actually win the battle. Self-serving interests and money trump country-first attitudes across the beltway landscape. If you are surprised at how far we have fallen so fast, look no further than the greed that exists inside the beltway and with groups and individuals outside the beltway whose only interests are to help themselves to a full plate of our money and our time. We must hold accountable not only the politicians who refuse to do the right thing and vote strategically with the goal of killing liberty destroying legislation, but those groups and individuals we have often felt to be our allies. We the people are alone out here with very little support. The battle is ours to fight, and ours to win or lose. The time to rely on so-called allied organizations and individuals is nearing an end.

At the end of this battle, we will be able to define those who are truly on the side of limited government and willing to do the hard work and those that are using current events to line their pockets. In the post-mortem of this first battle, count those organizations and individuals which pushed for strategic voting and made it their mission to push hard for a winning strategy as our allies and cast the rest aside like so much waste products.

The following is from Dr. Larry Hunter, former advisor to President Ronald Reagan and a strategical expert on controlling legislative results on the Hill:

It is now clear that we can defeat ObamaCare in the Senate but only if Republican Senators have their strategic wits about them and are perspicacious enough to vote strategically on a whole series of amendments, i.e. vote the opposite of how they ordinarily would vote on the merits of the amendments. For example, all Republican Senators must be prepared to vote at least “present,” and perhaps “no” (depending upon how many Democrats themselves are prepared to strategically vote contrary to their preferences on the merits) on removing the public option for Joe Lieberman; or to vote “present” or perhaps even “no” on an amendment adding an anti-abortion provision to the bill for Ben Nelson. The same goes for any amendments by or for Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad to reduce the cost of the proposal. I also suspect there will be several sham “fiscal-responsibility/deficit reduction” amendments offered, which Republicans will have to steel themselves to vote against. Moreover, there may be Medicaid amendments designed to reduce the fiscal burden on states that Republicans will be tempted to support, which they must vote against.

Success also will depend upon Republican Senators having the fortitude and self-discipline to refrain from offering “perfecting” amendments of their own that would make the bill more palatable to Democratic Senators on the margin such as Mary Landrieu and Blanch Lincoln. Indeed, the only amendments opponents to
ObamaCare should even think about offering to the Reid bill are amendments in the nature of a substitute that are so excellent on the merits that all conservatives enthusiastically could support and hence a sufficient majority of Democrats will certainly vote against and thus kill.

There is one overriding strategic consideration that must be kept in mind by Republicans Senators and determine every vote they cast: Majority Leader Reid is getting ready to do us an enormous favor by putting a bill on the floor (the Reid Amendment that he will offer as a substitute to H.R. 3962) that cannot get 60 votes. In other words, Reid is getting ready to put his party in a hole from which they can climb out only by “perfecting” the bill with amendments. I believe some of those amendments—two in particular (removing public option and adding an antiabortion provision)—can only succeed with Republican support. Republicans must deny Democrats any and all Republican support to perfect the bill, i.e., make it more palatable to any Democrats. If Republicans defeat all such “perfecting” amendments (by which I mean amendments that improve the bill’s prospect of passing), then we can take down the bill itself. Therefore every action taken by Republican Senators, every vote cast must be undertaken with one overriding strategic consideration: Do absolutely NOTHING to make the bill one iota more palatable to Democratic Senators such as Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson who will not vote “yea” on the Reid bill NOR WILL THEY VOTE “YEA” ON CLOTURE TO MOVE TO FINAL PASSAGE of the Reid bill as it will be configured when it gets to the Senate Floor.

If we prevent the Democratic Leadership from removing the poison provisions in the bill (especially public option and abortion), we can overcome any Leadership maneuvering to impose party discipline on cloture votes and hand out free passes on final passage votes. The free-pass strategy may work on lesser amendments along the way but it won’t work on the final cloture vote required to move to a vote on final passage if either poison pill remains in the bill. After all amendments have been disposed of, a “yea” vote on the final cloture vote to close debate on the bill and move to final passage will be understood by everyone to be tantamount to a “yea” vote on final passage, where only 50 votes will be required to pass the bill. Therefore, if we keep abortion and public option in the bill, I believe we can win the final cloture vote and prevent the underlying bill from ever coming to an up-or-down vote where Reid would be able to give out up to ten free passes to vote “nay” on final passage.

We have some very smart and dedicated staffers currently hard at work on this strategy inside the Senate. They need help, however, from outside groups to make this degree of strategic voting possible. It is not easy to convince Senators to vote strategically. We have to convince them the entire conservative movement will be behind them, explaining to their constituents what is going on and why, defending them against any critics who try to argue that ObamaCare is inevitable and therefore it is incumbent upon Republicans to make it as acceptable (least damaging) as possible. This kind of thinking is defeatist. WE CAN DEFEAT OBAMACARE IF REPUBLICANS HANG TOGETHER AND VOTE STRATEGICALLY AT EVERY STEP ALONG THE WAY. Conservative groups, therefore, must send Republicans a clear and concise message that they will hold Republican Senators responsible if they fail to vote strategically and ObamaCare is enacted into law.

First, we need to have every conservative group that does key-vote rankings to announce immediately that they intend to key-vote a “yea” vote on the cloture vote on a motion to proceed to consideration of H.R. 3962 as a “yea” vote on ObamaCare. They all need to put out press releases, put it on their websites, hold press conferences and write letters notifying Senators of their intentions. And, they need to do it IMMEDIATELY because Reid may be preparing to offer a motion to proceed on Tuesday and immediately thereafter file a cloture petition, which would enable him to hold a cloture vote before the Senate goes out for Thanksgiving on Friday if he has the votes. He may be engineering this rush before Thanksgiving to prevent us from organizing to defeat cloture on a motion to proceed. If he does not have the votes by Friday, he loses nothing, as he will have the Thanksgiving recess to work on getting the votes without exposing the details of the Reid substitute amendment. Even if we think he may have the votes already, we must nevertheless make the effort to deny Reid the 60 votes on a motion to proceed before Thanksgiving. That means getting the conservative organizations and grass-roots groups in motion on Monday.

There is talk that Lieberman and other skeptical Democrats already have agreed to vote for cloture on a motion to proceed. They will justify themselves by telling constituents that they want to pass a healthcare bill this year and in order to do so a bill must first be allowed to come to the floor for consideration. They will say the leadership has assured them that there will be ample opportunity to “perfect” the bill by amending it on the floor but that the only way to amend a bill is to have it on the floor under consideration.

Of course that narrative is not true, and it is meant simply to justify their trying to cover their behinds and still have it both ways. Senators like Lieberman very well could withhold their “yea” vote on a motion to proceed precisely in order to put sufficient pressure on the leadership to force it to make the changes to Reid’s amendment that recalcitrant Democrats demand BEFORE the bill comes to the floor.

Even if we lose on this cloture vote, it will still be a useful exercise to get the conservative movement and grass roots groups organized and cooperating strategically for the fight to come on the Senate floor. Therefore, it is incumbent on our groups to make it unambiguously clear that A VOTE FOR CLOTURE ON A MOTION TO PROCEED TO H.R. 3962 is a vote for ObamaCare. That requires an immediate and massive, no-quarter-given, public-relations campaign on key-voting the cloture vote on a motion to proceed to instill this fact in the mind of the public and Democratic Senators. We cannot give Democrats ANY fig leaf to hide behind.

Second, we need to prepare the way with these same conservative groups to man up when the time comes and key vote a “yea” vote on any anti-abortion amendment as a “yea” vote on ObamaCare. Although most of these groups would not ordinarily key vote any abortion vote, they must do so on ObamaCare, and they must have time to explain to their members and the public exactly what they are doing and why, which
is why that ball must be set in motion immediately.

The same goes in spades where the pro-life groups are concerned. These groups must be made to understand that a “yea” vote on an anti-abortion amendment is a “yea” vote on ObamaCare. We must make them understand that the Stupak Amendment is a snare and a delusion, a paper tiger that won’t work if relied upon to prevent government-funded/sponsored/facilitated abortions but instead will grease the skids for government-run healthcare and wholesale abortion. They also must come to the realization, hard as it may be for them to accept, that had the Stupak Amendment failed in the House, the Pelosi Bill would have crashed and burned. (Read the details here—“It Was The Stupak Amendment, Stupak”) It will be a heavy lift to convince these groups, especially given they already are engaged making the same mistakes in the Senate they made in the House. We cannot allow the same strategic blunders to occur in the Senate. If we do, ObamaCare will pass the Senate, and conservatives will have no one but ourselves to blame.

The outside conservative groups also need to prepare the groundwork for key voting any “yea” votes on amendments to remove the public option from the bill or to replace the public option with health-insurance cooperatives or to put a trigger on the public option, all as “yea” votes for ObamaCare. Finally, we must find a way to get the grass-roots organizations out in front on this strategy. Americans for Prosperity, Patients First, FreedomWorks, Tea Parties, 9/12 Organizations—all are essential to getting behind this strategy and supporting the Republican Senators in this effort.

I know we can win this battle because we already won a warm-up version of the same kind of battle recently on the so-called “Doc-Fix” bill. It required steely-eyed determination on the part of two Senators to maneuver the Republican Leadership into acting strategically to defeat the bill. Here is what happened.

Initially, Republicans did not want to appear to be opposing the doctors who support their campaigns, and so they were not going to object to Reid bringing the bill to the Senate Floor. However, Senators Coburn and DeMint were unwilling to give unanimous consent to proceed to consideration of the bill. This compelled
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to go to Reid and demand a list of amendments in exchange for unanimous consent to proceed to the bill. McConnell told Reid his conference was united (39 Rs) in opposition unless they got amendments. Reid then went to his caucus to get the 60 votes needed (and promised by President
Obama) to invoke cloture on the Motion to Proceed, but the votes weren’t there. Reid was forced to throw in the towel and essentially stuck his thumb in Obama’s eye because the president didn’t produce the votes he promised.

There is no doubt in my mind that the reason Republicans eventually became comfortable opposing the AMA and the reason why Democrats ultimately were unwilling to go along with the massive deficit spending involved with the Doc-Fix bill was because of the large number of conservative organizations, blogs and
grassroots activists working together on the same message with the same strategy, which in turn allowed the two Republican Senators to maneuver their leadership into the correct strategy. The victory was a team effort, and it never would have happened without everyone pushing in the same direction. The play to defeat the Reid bill will be more complex and a heavier lift but it is doable, and it is now our game to lose.

Also read: Abortion clause raises problems for Obama and Britain’s Nice Nanny. Dr. Hunter emails:

Once Obama’s home invasion force is in place, the only remaining “right to privacy” in America will be the right to terminate the life of an unborn child. And, anyone who thinks legislative language such as Stupak will prevent the government-run healthcare system from turning into a wholesale abortion clinic is delusional.

In other news and opinion:

ObamaCare: Nelson is Stupak all over again, but possibly worse

The White House is starting to make overtures once again about using Reconciliation in the Senate to force ObamaCare on an unwilling public.

The time to start understanding how to fight this is now. It is near the bottom of the strategy memo from Dr. Hunter, former policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and President and CEO of the Social Security Institute . This approach will require a campaign to bring this to national attention and pressure Republicans to make this an issue. If you are reading this in the future when reconciliation is already under way then it is already too late. There are many Senate insiders and Senators themselves who state the unlikelihood of Senator Reid attempting this violation of minority rights in the Senate, but what if they are wrong? From Dr. Hunter’s Memorandum to the Grassroots.

Senator Harry Reid has put the American people on notice that if the Republican Party does not capitulate and acquiesce to some version of ObamaCare, he will act like a thug and jam it down their throats. The only way to defeat Reconciliation is to be prepared at a moment’s notice to pivot from a localized strategy precisely tailored to threaten targeted Democrats’ weak spots to a national campaign aimed not at the substance of ObamaCare so much as the fairness and political prudence of jamming something as enormous and contentious as healthcare reform down the throats of the American people with fewer than a majority of sitting Senators voting in favor of it. The strategy to defeat Reconciliation must be aimed at the Democratic Party as a whole questioning its judgment, prudence, fairness and wisdom. The task at this point will be to characterize Reconciliation as political thuggery, totally unacceptable in the American democratic process; to raise such national outrage at the strong-arm tactics of Reconciliation that Democrats understand the American People will not tolerate it and will throw them out of office at the first opportunity.

Here is a suggested framework on which to build a strategy against Reconciliation:

Senator Reid threatens to tie dissenting Senators’ hands behind their backs with procedural restrictions on amendments, gag them with strict limits on debate and pummel the long tradition of minority rights in the U.S. Senate by ramming ObamaCare through the Senate with a bare majority or even with fewer than a minimum 51 votes of sitting Senators, if necessary, by having Vice President Biden break a 50-50 tie.

The parliamentary maneuver Senator Reid would use to pass ObamaCare by less than a majority vote of sitting Senators is known as “Reconciliation.” Reconciliation is an extraordinary budgetary procedure designed specifically to ensure passage of an annual budget and avoid a stalemate leading to a complete shutdown of the federal government. Reconciliation was not designed and never intended to circumvent regular order in the Senate to ram through controversial and far-reaching legislation such as healthcare “reform.”

Democratic Senator Robert C. Byrd, one of the authors of the Reconciliation procedure and foremost authority on the history of Senate rules and procedure describes what happens under Reconciliation this way:

“Under reconciliation’s gag rule there are twenty hours of debate or less if time is yielded back, and little or no opportunity to amend.”

This is political thuggery—political assault and battery upon the American People pure and simple. Senator Byrd best expresses why using Reconciliation to jam ObamaCare down America’s throat degrades the U.S. Senate and violates the spirit of our system of checks and balances:

“Using reconciliation to ram through complicated, far-reaching legislation is an abuse of the budget process…With critical matters such as a massive revamping of our health care system which will impact the lives of every citizen of our great land, the Senate has a duty to debate and amend and explain in the full light of day, however long that may take, what it is we propose, and why we propose it…We must not run roughshod over minority views. A minority can be right…Ramrodding and railroading have no place when it comes to such matters as our people’s healthcare.”

That is why Senator Byrd says, “I cannot, and I will not, vote to authorize the use of the reconciliation process to expedite passage of health care reform legislation.”

What Majority Leader Reid is hiding from the American public is the fact that a huge bipartisan majority of Senators agreed with Senator Byrd, when they were writing this year’s budget resolution back in April, that Reconciliation should not be used to railroad ObamaCare through the Senate.

During deliberations on the Senate Budget Resolution earlier this year, Senator Jim DeMint introduced a point-of-order amendment that would require a 60-vote majority to pass “any bill, joint resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report that eliminates the ability of Americans to keep their health plan or their choice of doctor (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office).” The Senate approved the DeMint Amendment unanimously.

Subsequently, before the Senate Budget Resolution went to a Conference Committee where differences with the House Budget Resolution were to be worked out, DeMint offered a motion to instruct the Senate Conferees not only to insist on retaining the 60-vote provision in the final Conference Report but also to widen the scope of the provision to cover any provision and so forth that decreases the number of Americans enrolled in private health insurance while increasing the number enrolled in government-managed, rationed health care. The DeMint motion to instruct conferees to insist on the 60-vote requirement for healthcare passed the Senate by an overwhelming vote of 79 to 14.

As a matter of congressional comity, the House ordinarily would have been expected to accede to the Senate provision since it affected Senate rules that applied only to the Senate. But mysteriously the 60-vote rule was stripped from the resolution in the dead of night, behind closed doors and out of sight of the rest of the Senate and the American People. Remarkably, Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Kent Conrad, must have fallen asleep during the Conference Committee meeting because he allowed the Demint 60-vote requirement to be removed from the Budget Resolution in Conference.

Now, Senator Reid stands on the flimsy excuse that the DeMint amendments are irrelevant because they were not in the final Budget Resolution Conference Report. But make no mistake, the 60-vote requirement—which was TWICE voted for by huge, bipartisan majorities in the Senate and did not affect the House—wasn’t in the final Budget Resolution Conference Report ONLY because Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad thumbed his nose at three fourths of his colleagues and took it upon himself contrary to the will of the Senate to unceremoniously strip their 60-vote rule out of the Conference Report.

With one-sixth of the U.S. economy at stake, the Senate should insist upon abiding by its own rule, which it TWICE adopted by overwhelming bipartisan votes. Why would Senator Reid insist upon using a provision the Senate TWICE agreed should NOT be used on healthcare because they knew it wouldn’t be right to pass a bill that divides the nation into feuding factions by a slim 50 votes?

Harry Reid’s argument that he is justified in jamming ObamaCare down America’s throat because there is no rule against it—actually because one rogue Senator took it upon himself to reverse the will and judgment of the entire Senate and eliminate a rule Senators thought was right and appropriate—is the pure sophistry of a tyrant.

The question is, what justifies the Senate in violating its own cherished norms and traditions? Why does Senator Reid refuse to abide by the 60-vote rule on healthcare the Senate TWICE voted to impose on itself by huge bipartisan majorities? Why does Senator Reid ignore the authoritative judgment of fellow Democrat Robert Byrd that it would be wrong, wrong, wrong to steamroller ObamaCare through the Senate under Reconciliation?

If Senator Kent Conrad had performed his duties correctly, then reconciliation would not even be on the table. An point-of-order amendment allows a Senator to raise a point-of-order objection and require the 60-vote requirement be followed. Remember, this passed unanimously. The instruction-to-conferees amendment which passed 79-14 is supposed to require the Senate conferees insist the 60-vote rule be included in the final combined House and Senate budget resolution. Yet it was not.

This is not and never will be a parliamentary argument. However, from a PR perspective, the Democrats can be forced into a defensive posture and answer to the American public why – why do they feel the rest of us must follow rules while they can just chose to ignore them at a whim? It is this elitist “rules for thee but not for me” attitude that turns most of us off to Washington to begin with. And don’t let them slide next year either. We are on to their game -they voted on it once and chose to ignore it. The spirit of the 60-vote rule and minority rights they voted on this year will not just disappear next year. We must insist they follow their own rules now and the spirit of those rules later. No more playing games, not more hiding, and no more dishonesty.

Fairness, abiding by the rules.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A phrase heard a thousand times, but there is a great deal of truth to it. I create computers for a living and the components that go inside a laptop, desktop, or server. My contribution is very specialized as a signal integrity engineer. Alongside me are personnel in hardware and firmware, test, measurement, software, specification working groups, mechanical design, and a hundred other positions including sales, marketing, Presidents, CEOs, and a Board of Directors. But no matter how good I may become at what I do, I could never accomplish this task on my own. It takes a team.

I am always amazed how something so complex can actually be designed, manufactured and finally function flawlessly (hopefully!). Now imagine if we did not have a CEO, a Board of Directors, Presidents, Directors, and senior management. In short, imagine we did not have any leadership and we were all told to go off and build something.

We would fail and fail big. Nobody would really know what to do, what features should be included, how to sell it, what the market or competition looked like. Many would run in different directions, some would team up, and perhaps some teams would merge or work closely with other teams. In the end though, this would all be doomed to failure without an overarching strategy. If we were smart, we would first set out to build a leadership team and create a strategy. Assume our fictional company decides not to take that approach.

Absent a company wide strategy and an organizational structure our chances of success would diminish. With a company wide strategy we all work together in such a way as to amplify one another until a product appears and hits the market. Often it just seems like pure magic that it can happen that way. That is not to say that failure is impossible. Even with a strategy and the leadership it is still possible to fail. However without a strategy and the necessary leadership at all levels of the company we are guaranteed to fail.

Many grassroots organizations lack a national strategy for whatever reason. I am rather new to Tea Party Nation so I am not really informed as to the leadership structure and planned strategies. The goal of any successful campaign is to target such a structure over time. The many beads that are rolling around need a thread to string them together.

What this does not mean is that everyone is marching in lockstep all the time. Local issues, local cohesion, and state and local leadership qualities can vary from place to place. Also a decentralized structure does not lend itself well to a top-down organization. There is a strenth and a weakness to this. A national strategy addresses weakness while preserving the strength and power of decentralized orgnanizations. Its purpose is to create the foundation that each member can use to focus at the local, state, and national level. It is always there so that you can return to it again and again and continue to execute it alongside other strategies.

Such a strategy memo does exist for defeating ObamaCare that could serve as a road-map to properly direct resources and plan call-to-action campaigns. It is well thought out, is based upon measurable results, derived from observational facts, and created to focus energy. The author, Dr. Larry Hunter is the former policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and current CEO of the Social Security Institute.

During the August recess and on 9/12 millions of grassroots across the nation pressured lawmakers to the point where one insider reported to me that staffers were ringing their hands in fear. They believed their bosses were going to lose their jobs and therefore, by extension, would they. Shortly after 9/12 the atmosphere was dismissive of the Tea Parties. We have an objective metric and that metric stated the obvious – we lost our momentum and therefore our ability to control the debate. During an interview with Fox News, Rep. Michelle Bachmann hinted at this phenomenon:

Since the members of congress have been back here for two months they kind of have forgot that message.

In the previous sentence during the interview she provides the referent for her statement as the messages that came out in August at the Town Halls and Tea Parties.

So the take away message is to never let up the pressure. We must re-create the pressure of the August recess. As this story indicates, the GOP is seeking to regain the August momentum:

Sensing that Democrats have regained momentum on healthcare reform, Republicans are taking steps to re-energize critics who loudly voiced their opposition this summer.

July and August were disasters for Democrats, but October has been much more productive as the Senate Finance Committee cleared its bill, with the support of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

Right here, right now, your Senator can be pressured. To many of them, power is like crack cocaine. Threaten to take it away from them and they will respond, but only if they believe you. In order to believe you, there must be a million yous out there sending faxes, calling, emailing, attending rallies, demanding town halls when Senators are in your state:

The good news is that Members of Congress are generally at home at least four days a week (Friday through Monday) where constituents can get their hands on them. This secret hidden in the open from constituents is vital for grass-roots organizations opposing ObamaCare to understand. THEY DON’T NEED TO WAIT FOR CONGRESSIONAL RECESSES TO HAVE CONTACT WITH THEIR CONGRESSMEN AND SENATORS. All they’ve got to do is be persistent four days out of seven, insisting that Members of Congress make themselves available to constituents at least one day every week, two when major bills such as healthcare legislation are under consideration. There is no reason Members of Congress cannot hold at least one major meeting with constituents every week when something major is under legislative consideration.

Grass-roots groups have been somewhat uncertain what to do next to combat ObamaCare after the successful August recess demonstrations and town halls and the September 12 Two-Million-Citizen March on Washington. Activists should take note: It is time to track down your Members of Congress at home—they are there at least four days a week—and insist that they hear your voices when you say, “No Public Option,” “No Insurance Mandates,” “No Tax Increases,” “No Medicare Cuts,” “No New Entitlements,” “No jamming ANY health bill down our throats under Reconciliation.” If they say they don’t have time to meet with you, they are dodging you. Track them down; give them no place to hide; insist they do their job at home if they are not going to do it in Washington.

It is quite obvious from the way wars are fought, companies are run, movies are made, cars are built, organizations are successful, and a host of other examples where a blueprint or umbrella strategy exists – that it is these strategies that pave the way for success. The Revolutionary War had its Continental Congress and we have our strategy memo. Or do we? In the end, it will be the lack of a national strategy that spells the failure of our movement to stop Obama’s attempt to take control over 1/6 of our economy. We ignore implementing a national strategy at our own peril.

• There is a strategy to defeat ObamaCare.
• Read this strategy. If your Senator is on the list, get boots on the ground and re-create the tension of the August recess. The goal is to dominate the cable and network news cycles. Fax, call and email your Senators but resist at all costs the urge to blast fax every Senator. Work only on your Senator(s).
• You can fax for free at American Voice and personalize your message.
• Know the working habits of your Senator. If you can, find them and protest. Do so for as many weekends as possible until ObamaCare is dead.
• Local media is your friend. In cities across your state, demand on air or in the paper that your Senator hold a town hall meeting.
• If your Senator is not on the list, then concentrate on making the Jim DeMint amendments an issue with your Senator. All Republicans, whether listed or not need to make this an issue. Why were they allowed to be stripped from the Budget Resolution opening the way for reconciliation when the Senate voted unanimously for them to be included? Make this a national issue. If you don’t know what I am talking about – read the strategy memo.

Live by the following two dictums:

• There is not limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit
• If you want to go fast – go alone. If you want to go far – go together.

There may be other things we can do but I honestly can’t think of them. We have to create public, tangible, local opposition to ObamaCare that Senators can measure with whatever calibrating mechanism they use and conclude the opposition reading is in the red zone. Some naysayers may be correct that there is nothing we can actually do to dissuade our Senators from voting for ObamaCare. However, I also know that if we could create enough local public opposition in those states mentioned in the strategy memo, they would vote against it.

So, it is an empirical, not a theoretical question: Can we turn out enough local opposition in the states in question to send your Senators’ opposition meters reading into the red zone? If we can, they will vote no. Maybe we simply can’t generate sufficient opposition; maybe it is simply hopeless as a matter of fact. My complaint is that we don’t really know that for a fact because we haven’t seen any local, feet-on-the-ground opposition on YouTube to the level it was present during the August recess, which leads me to believe no systematic effort has been made or the attempt was muted in some way.

The dog that doesn’t bark is pretty conclusive evidence that the dog is dead, comatose or not on the premises. If the pooch is alive and kicking, it is our job to sick him on our Senators so they know he will tear out their jugular if they don’t submit.

Don’t worry about what your enemies might do, but what they can do, and plan accordingly.

In other news and opinion:

Because Paul Krugman cares so much about the Republican Party

Health care takeover roll call vote — and what GOP Rep. Joseph Cao got from Obama; Plus: Organizing for America hustles more money

How To Divide a Party, In Three Easy Steps!.

$25 billion “stimulus” program produces 0 jobs

ObamaCare: Dithering while the economy burns

Democrats Sold Their Party’s Reproductive Soul

McClintock, R-CA: Healthcare mandates “brazenly unconstitutional”