-By Warner Todd Huston
Newly minted West Virginia Senator, Democrat Joe Manchin, ran for office denigrating Obama’s take over of our national healthcare system with his Obamacare law. Tonight he and other so-called “conservative Democrats” in the Senate got a chance to prove that they were, indeed, as conservative as they claimed to be by voting to repeal Obamacare. Not one of them made that vote, however.
In a vote strictly down party lines, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R, KY) repeal measure lost in a 51 to 47 vote. It needed a 60 vote super majority to pass.
McConnell did not likely expect his measure to pass, to be sure. His aim was meant at the very least to put everyone in the Senate on record as to where they stood on Obamacare. This isn’t the last word on the debate, either, as Republican Senator John Cornyn (Texas) vowed that this fight was not nearly over.
Within minutes after the vote, on the GOP’s Senate Twitter feed, Cornyn talked of the battle to come. “These are the first steps in a long road that will culminate in 2012 where we will continue to expose the flaws in this bill,” he said.
Mitch McConnell agreed posting, “We think this is just the beginning. This issue is still ahead of us. We will go back at it in a variety of ways.”
This vote proves several things. It proves that despite two years of millions of Americans voicing their disgust of Obamacare and despite the worst drubbing in an election for decades, the Democrats intend to die on the Obamacare hill. With every single Democrat voting against the repeal measure we now see that the Democrats are standing foursquare behind this socialist-like healthcare policy.
This vote also shows that there is no such thing as a “moderate” or a “conservative” Democrat. They may run for election pretending at being a center left politician, like Joe Manchin did, but they will vote like a hard-left, Europeanesque social democrat once in office. This vote once again proves that there is no such thing as a Blue Dog or moderate Democrat.
Lastly, this vote also shows that the GOP stood strong in the face of the Obamaites in the Senate. Leader McConnell led his caucus well in this vote. No mushy defectors were seen.
In any case the party line vote sets the stage for the 2012 election and cements the notion that the Democrat Party will stand against the preponderance of Americans that are against this socialist law. As a voter in America, if you stand against Obamacre, then you stand against the entirety of the Democrat Party. You cannot vote for a Democrat on any level if you value the free market and the Constitution.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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