Slow Down, Stop or Explode?!

Earlier on this blog, I touched on actor Tim Allen’s complaint about being a conservative in Hollywood. I imagine in a community where the mantra is “Hey, kids! Let’s put on a show”, being affiliated with a political movement that is by nature more likely to say, “Hey, kids! Don’t put on a show”, a conservative may find himself surrounded by a different political persuasion.

 

I also touched the differences between conservative & liberal by comparing these ideologies to the functions of a car.  It’s not fair to say republicans never want to start something and democrats never want to stop things. But on average, the basic function of a conservative is to say “no” or at least “hold on a minute”. But what happens when these two political ideologies are not working in tandem?

 

Consider the current mess that is The American Health Care Act (AHCA) which was created to have something in place once the Affordable care Act (ACA or Obamacare) is repealed. The Democrats are going to vote against this so the Republicans are trying to get this through on their own numbers. As the republicans have a majority in the House and the Senate, this should be easy, right?

 

Because there are different levels of conservative. Some want to slow down the car a little, others want to slow down a lot and others want the car completely stopped.

 

And there are those who think there should be no car. Welcome to the Freedom Caucus, an extreme hard conservative faction of the US House of Representatives. These guys want Obamacare repealed. But the limited, virtually ineffective AHCA is not enough for them. AHCA may be way smaller than the ACA but to the Freedom Caucus, AHCA is just another form of Obamacare. Their view? The US government shouldn’t be in the health care business. The Freedom caucus don’t want to slow down the car or bring it to a stop. They would be happy to explode the car.

 

On the other end of the spectrum are more moderate Republicans who have constituents who would be negatively impacted by the loss of the ACA. Any efforts to appease this group just makes the Freedom Caucus mad. Any efforts to satisfy the Freedom Caucus just worries the moderates even more.   

 

Normally, the extreme edges of a political party doesn’t have this kind of power. But zero effort has gone into bring the Democrats on board who collectively do not want to repeal Obamacare at all. There is literally nothing in the AHCA that would compel most Democrats to vote for it to replace the ACA.

 

At last report, the hard right wing of the Republican Party seems to holding firm in its opposition to the AHCA. Tonight’s scheduled vote on this topic doesn’t look good for Donald trump and Paul Ryan who have staked their political futures on getting this thing passed. If the AHCA doesn’t pass tonight, the Republican Party with a man in the White House and control over both Houses of Congress will have failed again to repeal Obamacare.


*3/23/2017: 03:40 PM EST Republicans have cancelled the vote on the AHCA." 

Even it passes the House, the Senate is even less inclined to agree to it. And the whole mess starts again. 

This is your US government in action.

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OK, we will move away from politics with upcoming posts about an encounter with hillbilly culture and a special post on the new Beauty and the Beast movie.

Until next time, please be good to one another.