‘…Mr. Axelrod’s not a legislator; he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.’

That was Rep. Stupak’s (DEMOCRAT) blunt response to David Axelrod’s assertion that the pro-life language currently in the health care rationing bill would be ‘adjusted.’ Stupak’s having none of it:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) pledged on Tuesday morning to defeat healthcare reform legislation if his abortion amendment is taken out, saying 10 to 20 anti-abortion-rights Democrats would vote against a bill with weaker language.

“They’re not going to take it out,” Stupak said on “Fox and Friends,” referring to Senate Democrats. “If they do, healthcare will not move forward.”

See Hot Air for the video. Stupak claims to have more than enough votes to shut down any final version that removes his amendment, which is both false and true. It’s false because the closeness of the original vote reflected a lot of horse-trading on the individual Member of Congress level; theoretically, the Speaker of the House could simply pressure the Democrats who got to vote ‘no’ last time to vote ‘yes’ this time.  It’s true because one of the reasons that they were able to get a final vote was because while the Stupak amendment was scored by NRLC, the final bill was not.  Strip out Stupak, and a vote for health care rationing becomes a vote for federal funding of abortions.  The NRLC pretty much cannot not score that appropriately.

I close with this observation: this situation for the Democrats is pretty much entirely due to the decision by House Republicans to oppose the health care rationing bill en masse.  They’re doing that because the Congressional Democratic leadership decided to shut out everybody except themselves and various outside lobbyists when it came time to put this monstrosity of a bill together.  And because the President didn’t intervene when it became clear that the process was disrupting his narrative, we’re now at the point where the Democratic party has to decide which side of the abortion debate is safer to infuriate.

But don’t feel bad for them: after all, they didn’t learn a blessed thing from their mistakes over the ‘stimulus’ and cap-and-trade.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.