There are some days where even we can't tolerate watching politics... Yesterday was definitely one of them. Maybe we were still worn out from the runoff. Or from being on the radio Tuesday and Wednesday, then finishing our floors. Whatever it was, we weren't looking forward too much to yesterday - and it was just as bad as we thought it would be.
There are some days when the Executive branch makes you want to puke. Other days the Judicial branch brings out a ruling that might make you shake your head. Of course, you can always count on the legislative branch to make you ill nearly every day they're in session. Yesterday was one of those rare days when all three branches were in full dysfunction - all at the same time.
Yes, we did watch the TV coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare.. it looked good at first: it was a 5-4 vote,and Chief Justice Roberts was giving the majority opinion.. Nope. Thanks to Fox News, we had a two minute period where we thought it was knocked down - but that was only because they ruled it was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. But, SCOTUS blog got it right first, and noted that the government argued what they said it wasn't when they passed it - that Obamacare is a tax, and they have the power to do so... The Court agreed. Maybe Joe Wilson was right after all about Barack Obama, though there are other places to state so...
Like we say, we don't judge court rulings much. We are not attorneys here. All we do is react to it. The reaction from others was pretty quick. The stock market dropped 70 points in the first 30 minutes.... Mitt Romney joined right in, and said it would be the first thing he'd get rid of. Like we said in our post from Wednesday, this could actually be a good thing for Romney. The economy is almost guaranteed to go nowhere, and if that happens, Romney's chances for election get better... I've read where a lot of Republicans aren't enthused about promoting Romney. Well they better, because if they think just getting a majority in the House and Senate will overturn Obamacare, they are in for a surprise... If Barack Obama is in office in January, all he has to do is veto any bill or budget eliminating the program. Then Congress needs to have a supermajority to overrule it. Good luck with that!
Of course, even we worry when one party runs all three offices, Republican or Democrat. The last four years gave us Obamacare and The Stimulus, the eight before that gave us Iraq and Compassionate Conservatism... Clearly, all the power in one party's hands makes for bad policy. Getting your way often leads to overdoing it....
After about 45 minutes, we heard enough of the Court ruling... Yet, we knew we still had the hearing in the House for the Contempt of Congress charge against Attorney General Eric Holder... Holder has been about as worried over this as Roger Clemens was a couple years ago. Honestly, we totally skipped the vote, and watched a series of funny movies for the next six hours. If we're going to watch comedies, we'd rather watch the ones that make us laugh.. The one interesting thing we saw was that 17 Democrats did agree - and the rest walked out, which tells us they didn't want to have their names attached to supporting Holder. Maybe it is the only way left to apply pressure to get the info needed from Holder to resolve this properly, but we hate partisan ugliness like this...
So, what are our thoughts about all of this? Well, we see a section of lower middle class people - those who make $30-40k a year, like a lot of people in Florence - will be paying fines for not having health insurance that their employers don't offer. Obama won, but Justice Roberts put it squarely in his lap that Obamacare IS a tax, and that was the only way it would be legal.. That's a huge political liability for Obama, and the GOP will be more than happy to slap that label on him...
Yes, we've seen some politically ugly days in Washington: The Clinton impeachment. Watergate. LBJ's daughters.. But rarely did we see a single day where DC was in full-blown dysfunction from all three branches at the same time ... It made us long to be one of those regular citizens - the ones who go through life oblivious to politics, and the goings-on in our capital : where the only thing on their minds are taking the kids to school, making dinner, and catching SportsCenter for the latest score. Of course, that's not us.. We love this stuff, but we enjoy it more when people come together, like tomorrow at the inaugural Four Horsemen Invitational, where yelling and ugliness are not tolerated. It's all about the love... and the beer and barbeque! Maybe THAT'S what DC needs.
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2 comments:
Mike- Got a guestion on the SC-7 runoff. I have read in the State paper that Bauer was ahead until the last few days and Nikki Haley coming in turned that race around. What's your take on that? TJ
I bet she'd like to take credit for that, but I'd say that's overestimating her effect on the race. There were two people key to Rice's win: Jay Jordan and Alan Clemmons. Jay didn't endorse, so that left the ex-jay voters to fend for themselves. At the same time, Clemmons had built strong ties with the Florence GOP. He got the district written to include Florence, and got key votes at the District convention for Elijah Jones. Left with only Bauer and Rice, they all followed him and went with Rice.
Bauer was down for more than the last couple days.. He went negative way too early, because he had high negatives, and tried to drag Rice down - and it backfired. he didn't run a positive ad until Runoff Day, and that was from a PAC.
Haley and the others were optics to show the campaign was gaining momentum, which is important. Rice turned a 32-27 deficit into a 56-44 win, which is basically a 29-12 turnaround. Jordan was 22%, and Prosser and Wallace got the rest at the beach.
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