Well, you gotta hand it to the wordsmiths at Heritage who came up with this line for Jim DeMint responding to the argument that the 2012 presidential election sealed the deal on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act:
I can hear many conservative friends saying to me right around this point: “Jim, we agree with you that ObamaCare is going to wreck the country, but elections have consequences.”[But] ObamaCare was not the central fight in 2012, much to the disappointment of conservatives. Republicans hoped that negative economic news would sweep them to victory, and exit polls confirmed that the economy, not health care, was the top issue. The best thing is to declare last year’s election a mistrial on ObamaCare.A “mistrial.” That’s hilarious.
That would be hilarious, except for the fact that DeMint is advocating the nullification of the 2012 election, and implying the fact that America elected Barack Obama not once but twice is irrelevant. And what would "declaring last year's election a mistrial" look like?
Ask House GOP nutjob Steve Stockman, as Steve M. points out. The nutjob Texan is handing out copies of the World Net Daily screed Impeachable Offenses to every Congressperson he can find.
But they wouldn't try to impeach Obama with Democrats controlling the Senate (and thus preventing conviction), would they? Well, Democratic control of the Senate didn't stop them from shutting down the government in order to defund Obamacare, did it? And a futile impeachment attempt wouldn't rattle global financial markets! (It didn't in 1998, right?) So it's a genius plan!
Yes, I think the history of the shutdown, and the fact that the Crazy Caucus would clearly do it all over again despite the fact that it was an utter failure, strongly suggests that the crazies might go for impeachment next. And John Boehner probably will do nothing to stand in their way. And there'll be primary challenges for any doubters.
Oh yes, if it wasn't somehow on the table before, it is now. Watch. We're nowhere near peak ODS.
I thought "mistrial" wasn't all that crazy, though utterly wrong as you'd expect from DeMint. He was saying Obamacare was on trial, not Obama himself (PBO was speaking for the defense). Romney was in a bind, unable to explain why he opposed the bill without admitting that he opposed the very popular Massachusetts bill (the press somehow never managed to note that it passed over his veto, I guess they were too busy counting "gaffes"). If the defense fails to present a case, you can call for a new trial, though "mistrial" isn't the right word. Of course this one was the prosecution's failure, so too bad, suckas.
ReplyDeleteSo, the legislation didn't pass over Mitt's veto - he signed it into law with some line-item vetoes, of which 8 were overridden. That's quite a different thing.
ReplyDeleteThe employer mandate is what made it not a Heritage program but more like 1993 Hillarycare proposal. It is the difference between left and right.
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