Day: July 2, 2012

Chris Wallace Eats Mitch McConnell For Lunch – on FOX

Trish

Enjoy watching Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who already looks like a fish on the pier that someone caught by mistake and didn’t throw back in time, go blank when Chris Wallace (on FOX News!) asks what the Republican alternative is to “Obamacare.”

But keep a couple of points in mind as you view.

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Romney’s Top Operative Undercuts Key GOP Talking Point, Says Mitt Agrees with Pres. Obama That Heritage Mandate Penalty Is Not a Tax

Jon Ponder

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In an appearance on Chuck Todd’s oddly named MSNBC show “The Daily Rundown” this morning, Mitt Romney’s top campaign adviser Eric “Etch-A-Sketch” Fehrnstrom admitted that Romney agrees with Pres. Obama on a fundamental issue of legal semantics about the Affordable Care Act. Fehrnstrom said that, in spite of the Supreme Court’s ruling otherwise, the penalty to be imposed on people who refuse to buy insurance under the Heritage Foundation-invented mandate in the Affordable Care Act is not a “tax.”

At minute 4:24, Todd finally gets a definitive answer:

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Frum: Even If Mitt Wins Presidency, GOP Will Not ‘Repeal and Replace’ Affordable Care Act

Jon Ponder

Republicans will find the task of writing their “replace” law even more agonizing than the Democrats found original passage. The party has no internal consensus on what a replacement would look like. Worse, any replacement of the law’s popular elements will require financing. But where is that money to come from? New taxes are unacceptable. The proceeds of “closing loopholes” are already spoken for — that’s how President Romney has promised to finance his promise to cut the top rate of tax 28 percent. And he’s also promised to increase defense spending.

– Republican pundit and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum.

Fallows: Five Signs That the United States Is Undergoing a Right-Wing Coup

Jon Ponder
Graph showing rise in filibuster abuse by Republicans
Graph showing rise in filibuster abuse by Republicans

Writing last week before the Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, James Fallows at the Atlantic suggested that by subverting one branch of government — the Judiciary, and in particular, the Supreme Court — Republican corporatist radicals are staging a slo-mo coup right before our eyes:

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