Quote of the Day, Oh, Yeah, I Remember 2006, Too edition.

That was the time of Maximum Suckage.

“Right now, Democrats can’t figure out how to get away from Obamacare, so they are digging around desperately for something off-topic to discuss,” [Republican strategist Brad] Todd said. “I had the same emotion in 2006 when it was obvious the war was going to beat us but we weren’t willing to run against the war that we believed in. There is never any magic trick to get out of this box when your party is on the wrong side of the only issue voters care about.”

Continue reading Quote of the Day, Oh, Yeah, I Remember 2006, Too edition.

Paul Babeu’s career is over.

Strikes one and two:

An Arizona sheriff who became the face of Sen. John McCain’s stand against illegal immigration threatened his boyfriend, an illegal immigrant himself, with deportation if news of their relationship ever leaked out, an alternative newspaper in Arizona reported Saturday.

[snip of Paul Babeu denying that he threatened his ex with deportation]

The Phoenix New Times first reported the threats early Saturday after interviewing the boyfriend, a 34-year old Mexican man, and his lawyer. The boyfriend alleges Chris DeRose, Babeu’s campaign manager, demanded he sign a confidentiality agreement; if the relationship became public, the boyfriend says DeRose hinted it would focus attention on the boyfriend’s immigration status.

I don’t care whether Babeu’s gay or not, of course; and under normal circumstances bringing it up would be irrelevant to the situation. The man’s not married and what two consenting adults get up to in their private lives is largely a matter of indifference to me. And, of course, a person’s sexuality is independent of his or her views on illegal immigration. There are plenty of gay people out there who take a tough stance on the issue.

But. Those people generally don’t go out with allegedly illegal immigrants and then threaten them later. The Phoenix New Times article can and will be contested, but it’s definitely clear that there was a relationship, it went fairly spectacularly south, and Babeu made some statements in the aftermath that do not reflect well on him. As in, statements that can be construed as being potentially abusive-of-power.

And then there’s strike three: Continue reading Paul Babeu’s career is over.

Health care rationing disaster averted by MLK Day?

It was a close-run thing, folks.  The nearest-run thing you ever saw.

Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said negotiators from the White House, Senate and House reached a final deal on healthcare reform days before Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

Labor leaders had announced an agreement with White House and congressional representatives over an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans on the Thursday before the special election.

[snip]

Harkin said “we had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn’t get it back.” He said negotiators had an agreement in hand on Friday, Jan. 15.

(Via The Corner) No chance at that point for calling an emergency session on Saturday the 16th or Sunday the 17th, of course. But Monday the 18th… was Martin Luther King Day. In other words, a federal holiday. So there was no chance of action until Tuesday the 19th; and Tuesday the 19th was too late.  Imagine what it would have looked like if they had passed this thing on the very day that Scott Brown won a Senate election in Massachusetts on a platform of stopping this thing; but even if you couldn’t, Democratic legislators apparently could.

Moe Lane

PS: Nope, it’s not even ironic.  Just… karmic.

Crossposted to RedState.