House Democrat: Hey, No Worries, We'll Be Stripping the Stupak Amendment Out of the Bill Shortly Enough

Of course, of course. Which is why I find it so preposterous that Republicans couldn't manage the tactical savvy to vote "present" on the Stupak Amendment in the first place.

Sometimes I get the feeling that savvy is looked down upon in the GOP as being "inauthentic" and lacking "integrity" or something. As if anything clever -- well, okay: devious -- is somehow a sell-out.

And then the Democrats have our lunches. Because we're elevating "principle" above practical real-world effect.

A top House Democrat said Monday she's "confident" that a conference committee will strip language in the House health bill on taxpayer funding for abortion.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats' chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-choice lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from going to subsidize abortions.

"I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won't be there," Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. "And I think we're all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that's the case."

Karl discussed the GOP "enabling" PelosiCare by voting for this sham.

Dave from Garfield Ridge wrote to me about this.

[Ramesh Ponnuru's question:] "I wonder what the advocates of this tactic think pro-life groups should have done? Should they have refrained from urging congressmen to cast a pro-life vote on the most important abortion-policy question before the House this year in the interest of affecting the outcome of a bill that is outside their bailiwick?"

This strikes me as missing the forest for the trees. Whatever its merits, the Stupak amendment was essentially grandstanding; the health care bill is, as always, the real-- and only-- threat. As Mark Steyn constantly and correctly notes in The Corner, all that matters to the Left is that the bill passes-- once that occurs, it'll never be eliminated, and then everything is permissible. Or are you comfortable in assuming that if the U.S. government takes over 1/6th of the economy, they'll refrain from modifying nationalized healthcare in the future in order to gut the Stupak provision? The 112th Congress, the 119th Congress, the 234th Congress will all have many, many opportunities to federally fund abortion as long as they have control of health care.

The abortion fight is a good and honorable fight. But if the plan passes, it'll become a Christmas tree for liberal entitlement ornaments in perpetuity, affecting far more Americans than just the unborn.

Stop national health care, and no one has to worry, ever, about whether it funds abortions or not.

Making this an easier call is that it was obviously a sham vote that was never worth the paper it was printed on. It was a contrivance simply to give endangered moderate "Democrats" a pro-life vote before they voted for the pro-abortion bill.

Update: For the other side, see John McCormack, via Hot Air. He says the present gambit wouldn't have worked, as all Stupak demanded was a vote, not an outcome. Having had the vote, the majority of the Blue Dogs were appeased.

But, again: Three votes.

posted by Ace at 12:48 PM

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