Really good post by Rick Moran today in which he details what the Democrats options are if Brown wins. That’s not a sure thing and many conservatives should remember this.
The panicked Democrats are thrashing about trying to come up with a way to save health care reform if Republican Scott Brown wins the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat.
The first scenario involves challenging the results of the election, no matter how much Brown wins by. The Democrats have already deployed their crack team of election law lawyers who will attempt to muck up the process of counting the ballots, challenging machine counts, trying to force a recount if the result is close enough, and generally throwing a monkey wrench into the proceedings.
The Massachusetts Secretary of State must certify the results within 10 days of the election.
This means that he won’t be seated until the end of January at the earliest and unless he wins big, he will probably be delayed even further meaning the caretaker of that seat will remain there when ObamaCare is brought up for a vote.
Rick then quotes Jonathan Chait at TNR who gives 3 options. Hold the vote before Brown is seated, have the House pass the Senate version and then use a reconciliation bill to implement the bill, and the last option is to flip Snowe.
Rick again:
The Maine senator may very well end up voting for the revised package since, according to Chait, all of her concerns about the bill have been met. Her calculation now is purely political; how badly does she want to remain in the Republican party?
~~~If the Democrats were to employ reconciliation in getting health care reform passed, the Republicans would have no choice but to bring the senate to a standstill. If they didn’t, the Democrats would be able to ride roughshod over them for the rest of the year, not to mention destroying the principle of minority rights. It is a scorched earth option that the Democrats use at their own peril.
The only other option the Democrats have is to vote to get rid of the filibuster entirely. This, I don’t see happening. Saner heads in the party realize that they will not always be in the majority and that the filibuster is a useful tool to block legislation.
So don’t think for one minute that a turning tide in Massachusetts means we can just sit back and bask in the glory. There are still plenty of tricks up the sleeves the slimy politicians. The key will be when Brown is seated, and I see challenge after challenge coming from the fatcat lawyers the Dem’s are sending to the state.
But….the first thing that needs to be done is to ensure a large Brown victory, and THEN we will deal with the typical corrupt trickery from the Democrats.
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