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