The rats are clambering aboard the SCHIP. From a Florida reader:
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R from FL) will vote to override the President. What an apologist. His staff said: He doesn’t like the tax increase and doesn’t like the amount of expansion but… Since he only won by a few hundred votes, he can’t afford to lose many supporters.
So much for the theory that a legislator owes his constituents his judgment. We seem to have returned to the days when the so-called “right” feels the left’s destination is inevitable and all they can do is delay the time it takes to get there. There’s no hope of reversing old entitlements or even stopping new entitlements; all that can be reasonably expected is that the GOP will marginally constrain the expansion of the new entitlements: The Dems want an express Superchief to Sweden, but the Republicans are offering a slow train. That’s some choice at the ballot box, and is one reason, I think, for the unresponsiveness of the GOP base.*
(*Excepting the Ron Paul supporters, I have never seen such a dearth of Republican candidate signs in my corner of New Hampshire this near to Primary Day: you’d never know any of the so-called front-runners were even in the race.)