Lonely Are The Brave

Ya know, when this latest ObamaCare push started, "stimulating" a cottage industry in armchair whip-counting, I did some very simple math: start with the House vote the last time (220-215 yes), flip one vote (Joe Cao, the lone Republican sheep), and deduct an additional (and eventual) four votes for Robert Wexler (resigned), Neil Abercrombie (resigned), Haw-Haw Murtha (expired), and Eric Massa (snorkeled). That meant Crazy Nancy was starting at 215-216.

Then I deducted the twelve votes of the Stupak band, increasing Pelosi's deficit to 203-228, leaving her thirteen votes short. No more crystal ball gazing is necessary. Why? Because Stupak and his allies are the only Dems who proved themselves unbribeable and unbulliable in the House's first go-round in early November. I don't know how many of the thirty-nine Dems who did vote nay were in Granny's bloomer reserve, but clearly it wasn't enough to overcome the Stupakers' defection. So she caved on his pro-life amendment, and the bill eventually passed. So the real question is how many yays she stood to lose versus how many nays she could turn.

The bad news for the House bag lady? Stupak's objections have grown beyond just abortion:

I'm not going to gush too much about, um, B.S., because he his is, after all, a left-liberal who was perfectly happy to vote for this abomination once his pro-life concerns were addressed. But he is also that rarer-than-hen's-lips phenomenon, a Dem with a non-leftish principle that isn't just superficial pandering. When he says he can't live with this reconciliation/Slaughter solution garbage, you have to listen, even if you're Nancy Pelosi. Why? Because he's earned the right to be taken seriously

In stark contrast to this deranged old buzzard:

It is axiomatic that an officeholder's leadership ability is inversely proportional to their lust for power. Leaders inspire and persuade people to follow them through their arguments and their example; thugs and crooks lie, cheat, steal, and in some environs, even kill to "ram" through what they want, the law and the people be damned. Which does a lot more than "suggest" the size of the grain of salt (hint: slightly smaller than the Chrysler Building) with which to take Speakerette Filthy McNasty's pledge to eschew the SlaughterHouse and have a [GASP] "open, honest" up-or-down (right, Barry?) vote on Senate ObamaCare. Or her lamentation of the "lost" public option, which will simply be in ObamaCare II, doubtless to be kicked off next week.

You think I sound disapprobious? Mark Levin wants to see Louise Slaughter fed through a woodchipper (politically speaking, of course):

Kinda begs the question, really. Truth is, there are a lot more Dems than just that trollish waste of skin who merit being fed backwards through the bunghole. But, alas, it'll never happen, because even after the GOP retakes the House this fall, Speaker Boehner is going to have a ton of bigger fish to fry than to carry out a surgical vendetta against Cuntzilla. But you can't blame the man for dreaming.

Speaking of the next Speaker, he had his [ahem] leadership update today:

I'm actually dubious about an Easter recess full of another round of angry townhall confrontations making much of a dent in BarryCare's ultimate fate. If the past eight months of overpowering public opposition to this atrocity - to say nothing of cratering polls, losing the New Jersey and Virginia governorships, and Uncle Teddy's seat going red hasn't killed this thing, nothing We, The People say or do is going to stop it. The reason, of course, is that it is being maniacally driven from the top. Barack Hussein Obama is a Marxist-Alynskist who doesn't care about "good government," about the law, and sure as hell not what we think; he's a megalomaniac and wannabe dictator who is simply never going to let go of this wrenching, "revolutionary" transformation obsession. It's like Kyle Reese's description of the T-800 in Terminator I:

Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Substitute "enslaved" for "dead" (for now, anyway) and "Obaminator" for "terminator" and that about sums it up. For the Li'l President, the ends justify any means necessary.

Which brings us back to Bart Stupak and they fairly stunning development that broke just moments ago: the Politburo has told him and his Gideon's band to bleep off:

Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Representative Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”…
What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”
If ObamaCare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

Of course, the rather gaping other side to the emphasized portion of the quote is that more children being born means more future taxpayers to be syphoned to try and pay for Red Barry's "transformations". Assuming there were any jobs for them, which there won't be. Maybe the Alaska Gulag will need more prison guards or something. And that's if they gave Brother Bart what he wants. I guess we'll have to make room for all the amnestized former illegals who'll be the vanguard of the occupying Sino-Russo-Islamist Caliphate forces. Wanna lay odds on a ChiComm-style forced sterilization program being part of ObamaCare II?

Part of me winces in embarrassed incredulity at Stupak's naivete. When has there EVER been room for pro-lifers in the Democrat Party? More to the point, the ONLY reason he got a vote on his pro-life amendment to the House version of the bill in November is because the latter wouldn't have passed without the former. He had the Wicked Witch of the West Coast over a barrel and they both knew it.

Which suggests that that isn't the case this time around. Why would the politburo blow off the Stupak Dozen (or fewer) unless they had lined up replacement votes elsewhere in the Donk caucus?

Or maybe....what if they don't have the votes (yet) but have simply gotten tired of the two months of post-Scotty B vacillating, and of putting up with baby-loving heretics like Brother Bart, and have decided to damn the torpedoes and go for broke? Just pull the train out of the station, fueled by unconstitutional legislative fraud and an avalanche of bribery and graft that somehow manages to exceed even the Senate corruptionfest that so many House Dems claimed not to want to touch with a ten-foot Slaughter?

Lucifer may finally be right about one thing: the time for talk seems, at last, to be over. The time for sheer, brazen, totalitarianist will has arrived.