Who are the House Dems saying they’re going to vote “no” on Health Care Reform even after they voted yes back in November? Here’s our list.

As politics and particularly political fundraising becomes more and more a brainstem-stimulating affair, I feel like we’re all increasingly familiar with the literary form I’m calling ‘gonzonia’, those mass emails sent out, usually to raise money, aimed at the most irascible, angry and threatened, or simply the ost impulsive people. You know, the emails with a lot of exclamation points and bolds and underlines and even double underlines when the rush of regular old underlines wears off for over-use. Read More

Former eBay CEO and now GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman got caught staging a town hall meeting. “You’re an integral part of this, lots of cheering would be good.”

This comes on the heels of the photo op that she invited reporters to only to have her security remove them from the premises.

The GOP’s real plan to kill Health Care Reform: psy-ops against House Dems.

As we get down to crunch time on the big health care vote in the House, we’re closely tracking which members who voted yes on the earlier House version of the bill are changing their votes to no on the Senate version of the bill. But as you probably well know, crunch time is also when a lot of deals are cut and congressman feel they have the most leverage. So you see a lot of gamesmanship going on.

Take the case of Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL). He voted for the original House bill. But as I mentioned earlier, he was on Hardball last night and said he would vote against the Senate bill bill because of the immigration provisions. That prompted some of our readers to call Gutierrez’s office today, and they got a pretty different answer about what Gutierrez’s position really is: Read More

Confirming what he said last night on Hardball, Rep. Gutierrez’s (D-IL) confirms he’s a no now on Health Care Reform.

Republicans put Sen. John Cornyn in charge of their senate campaign committee this year. But every candidate he’s gotten behind is losing on the ground in their respective states. And at least a few look likely to lose in their primaries.

In order to get a Health Care Reform bill, the compromises that have been necessary on immigration and abortion rights have been painful and galling. For what it’s worth, the restrictions on illegal immigrants accessing the health insurance exchanges seem very unwise on policy grounds as well as being needless on the cost side. Indeed, they probably jack up the costs since undocumented workers tend to skew younger than the population at large. Still, with all that, is it really moral, let alone wise politically to kill legislation that would provide insurance for 30 million people because immigrants in the country illegally would be barred from access?

In the clearest indication yet that the House leadership is prepared to push forward with a vote on the Senate health care bill with or without pro-life Democrats onboard, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told reporters this morning: “We don’t want to go without their votes, but we do want to forge ahead …”

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who voted for the original House health care bill, says he can’t vote for the Senate version, apparently costing Nancy Pelosi yet another vote.