Substituting for Mr. Gregory this week were NBC's Savannah Guthrie and Joe Scarborough respectively, with Mr. Scarborough taking the round table. In the opening interview, Rick Santorum said that what's worse than a contested convention is picking the wrong candidate. With due respect, Ms. Guthrie got the wrong candidate in grilling Mr. Santorum on getting out of the race. Those questions should really go to Newt Gingrich, who at this point is being completely ignored by the media. The general Republican consensus with the small wave of endorsements this week of Mitt Romney is that Republicans should start focusing on a one on one race. However, that's all that Rick Santorum wants, his chance to have a one on one primary votes with Mr. Romney. It's Mr. Santorum's only real chance to contend, possibly beat, Mr. Romney in Wisconsin and or Pennsylvania, Mr. Santorum's home state and where it is now a dead heat.
In his campaign of inevitability, as Mr. Santorum correctly put it, Mitt Romney may be that 'wrong' candidate as his favorability rating is at 34 percent, damage done inadvertently by his Super PAC, so much negative advertising that it has turned people off. Also, there's the damage the candidate has done to himself with all of his changing on positions and the endless verbal gaffes, that Mika Brzezinski who essentially co-hosted today's round table, pointed out through a series of clips. We must admit it is fun to see how far Mitt Romney can take this vulgar display of wealth, and the house with the lobbyist and car elevator is a great way to one-up yourself.
Mr. Santorum was also making the case that the Republican nomination is not a done deal because more than half of the delegates in states where they've already had primaries have not yet committed to a candidate. But what is the end game for Mr. Santorum in taking this line of attack, a contested convention? It's at the convention where the establishment does take over, which is only a further benefit to Mr. Romney. It's a weak case on the part Rick Santorum for the nomination. But you never know, we agree with Tom Friedman who said today on the panel that the Republican Party is becoming a radical party. You could tell that the comment made his conservative colleague David Brooks cringe, as it should. In this Republican primary, the rhetoric has gone farther to the right than in the past 40 years at least.
And of course, speaking of weak cases, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) best answer in defense of two-thirds of the American people against the Affordable Healthcare Act is that once people get beyond all the horribles being touted about the bill, they'll see the benefits. What? However, he did say that the concept of the individual mandate came from the conservative Heritage Foundation back in 1993. For Democrats, this is a good nugget to be pulling out hammering home, that conservatives were for this but the Dems just haven't made the point effectively enough as Mr. Schumer did today. It wasn't as weak an argument as the case the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli made for the law before the Supreme Court this week, according to all reports, blogs, and tweets.
Mr. Schumer did say that even given the weak argument, it's difficult to say how the court will judge. However, there will be significant negative effects if the court does not uphold the law, and those will be felt on all sides. From the round table, Jon Meacham stated that it would be a permanent black eye for the President if it's not upheld. It will be - he spent a year and a half working on a Health care law that was deemed unconstitutional. If the vote comes down 5-4 against, which looks like the anticipated tally, the court will be viewed by most to be ideological and partisan, and Republicans who will be thinking victory will once again be the grand party of 'no' because they'll offer no alternative but to cut benefits for Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest. Finally, what will ultimately be lost, and rather quickly, is Americans faith in our system of government. Congress can barely get anything done, and when they finally do pass something of significance, for good or ill, a court of 9 can negate the whole thing. It leads one to ask, what's the point?
There's no doubt that the court is ideological activist, the track record is there. We contended before in this column that the court makes decisions without considering the practical nature of their conclusions. Case in point is the Citizens United decision, where the court made a conclusion and now see the result in practice and there thinking that it's pretty awful what they unleashed. Since they've seen it now and the accompanying consequences, this time around with health care the judges are trying to consider the effect of the decision more. This is what leads a smart man to ask dumb questions about mandating people to eat broccoli.
It seems that the court is short in the overarching consideration for the Interstate Commerce Clause and the effect on it for striking down the law, a point that Senator Schumer rightly brought up. By ruling against the government, the court could put Congress's ability to regulate industries that operate state to state in real jeopardy. As Mr. Schumer mentioned, food safety standards could deteriorate. This and environmental protections, air and water, are underestimated in significance of importance in this country. We don't seem to understand that the better the food, the better the air, and the better the water, the less we'll be sick and... then require less health care.
Tom Friedman and David Brooks of the New York Times, Fmr. Newsweek Executive Editor Jon Meacham, Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN) and MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski.
Postscript: Oh yeah, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) was on the program today to endorse Mitt Romney. We guess that is what you would call 'mild news' given the upcoming Wisconsin primary. Important? Hardly, no one's listening, not even in Wisconsin.
No comments:
Post a Comment