Told ya so: Nelson admits Dems want Nebraska bribe for everyone

As I predicted a week ago, the Democrat’s budget-busting socialist big-picture plan to have a full government takeover of medicine, with Senator Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) bribe as the camel’s nose under the tent, is coming to light.

It is being reported that Nelson contacted South Carolina’s Attorney General Henry McMaster who is leading the charge by over a dozen Republican states’ Attorneys General to prepare to file lawsuits against the Senate’s health care plan, should it pass.

The fact that Nelson’s plea to “call off the dogs” has been made public is already very damaging to Nelson and Senate Democrats.  But far more so is the report by McMaster’s office which says that “Senator Nelson said (Nebraska’s special treatment in the Senate bill) would be ‘fixed’ by extending the Cornhusker Kickback (100% federal payment) on Medicaid to every state.”

Again, as I said on December 26th, “They have gotten much closer to the ‘public option’ than the public realizes. “

Nelson has committed political suicide in a few short days by his actions.  A Rasmussen Reports poll released last week shows him trailing his Republican challenger by an astonishing 61% (for the Republican) to 30% (for Nelson).  To put a finer point on how disastrous his health care shenanigans have been for his politcal future, Rasmussen notes that “When survey respondents were asked how they would vote if Nelson blocks health care reform, 47% still pick Heneman while 37% would vote to keep the incumbent in office. Twenty percent (20%) of those who initially said they’d vote for Heineman say they’d switch to supporting Nelson.”

And Nelson just stuck his foot deeper into the pile with his now-public contact with McMaster, in which he sounds like a desperate tool of Harry Reid.  Nelson has two choices:  Go down with the ship or look for a graceful way out.  I’m sure he’d love to do the latter, but it will only happen if the bill goes to Conference or is somehow modified, even in a small way.  If the House were to simply vote to concur with the Senate bill, the Senate bill will be signed by Barack “You Lie” Obama, and that will be that.  The good news is that the House is unlikely to just sign on to the Senate bill.  So-called conservative Democrats, whose own political futures must look extremely dim right now, should stop blindly supporting Nancy Pelosi who is so clearly willing to sacrifice them.  And the far left of the House Democrats probably won’t support a bill with no public option and no huge income tax surcharge.

At the end of the day, the best chance of Democratic health care “reform” dying is if they keep talking about it.

In the meantime, betting on which party will have control of the House of Representatives after the next election (which would require the GOP to win a net of at least 40 seats) has shown a slow but steady climb over the last 6 months, from just over 20% to about 36% today.  Similarly, the odds of the winner of the 2012 Presidential election being a Republican have climbed since May from about 28% to about 38% today.

There has not in my lifetime been a more stark and repugnant reminder of what the Democratic Party really stands for than the trio of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.  Although some may think I’m too optimistic, I have just enough faith in the American electorate to believe that this clear view of what anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-rational “Progressivism” truly means will do great electoral damage to the Democratic Party for quite a few years to come.  The question remains, however, whether the Republicans will actually give people something to vote for, to be passionate about.  They have to show that they are the party of liberty and limited government, not of the worst possible combination of social issues demagoguery and Beltway business-as-usual.