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There’s almost always something just to make a comment about and this week is no different as the first segment had NH State Senator John Reagan, Josiah Bartlett Public Policy Center’s Exec. Dir. Charlie Arlinghouse, and Republican political operative Jim Merrill.  Each had something that evoked a quick comment.

• Reagan: Morse’s attempt was to extract a maximum of federal dollars to save the NH budget.  That was the plan – gather over $400 M in Federal dollars.
  • Right.  When in trouble, why is it that the Feds are the FIRST resort of refuge?  How about resetting of internal priorities instead of trying to be everything to all people and all issues?
  • Is the NH Budget in that bad a shape that the first thought is that the Federal Government’s “chains attached” actually palatable?
  • Money over independence?  It’s not like the State’s budget is overwhelmingly driven by “outside” money but geez…
  • I agree with Steve – instead of “moneygrubbing it back” into the State, how ’bout keeping it from leaving the in the first place?  When the $17 trillion debt finally accomplishes it “BOOM!”, isn’t it better to be unhooked as much as possible?

• “We thank them when they’re right!”: Reagan said he changed his vote as he realized that instead of being a boon, this legislation ran counter to his Principles (and the Brits’ National Healthcare System debacles helped his decision as well).  BRAVO, Senator!

• Arlinghouse- GOP was going to look for a compromise?

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From This Week With George Stephanopolous about Obama’s latest unilateral Unitary President proclamation changing Obamacare saying that if you have a plan you can now keep it for another two years

Sidenote: (to be repeated as often as the MSM brings up old news as well) You know, Bill Clinton’s wonderkid who now masquerades as a non-partisan “journalist”.  You may remember him as the Democrat tool that was the tip of the spear that brought the meme that Republicans want to ban access to contraceptives during the Republican Prez Primary Debates):

A snippet from the panel:

Jonathan Karl: What is means it that voters will not cancellations a month before the mid-terms. That’s the point here. That’s the biggest point.  It is politics, absolutely.  It’s no question.

Ann Navarro: Absolutely

Martha Raddatz (who has the definitive line): Certainly there’s politics in everything.  C’mon, We’re in Washington DC.

Right.  Sure, that may be true in DC but it never seemed to be that way everywhere else.   

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From Meet the Press with David Gregory was this exchange concerning a slight from a hard Left Democrat and a hard Right Democrat over the poor.  It was clear that the Democrat has a “sniffling” attitude that perpetuates the meme that Conservatives (and Republicans) hate the poor in a backhand slap against the just ended CPAC meeting.  I guess she’s never read “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism” by then liberal Professor Arthur Brooks from Syracuse University.  A couple of comments from me afterwards (as well as in between).

Ralph Reed: People don’t care what you know until they know that you care (Jack Kemp) and the Republican Party has gotta do with Francis is doing with the Catholic Church. Francis is putting the poor, and care for the poor, and amelioration of the poverty where it belongs which is at the center of the Gospel. If people who are lower middle class are struggling, who are poor, and are wanting to climb that ladder of opportunity but are having a hard time grabbing that first rung? If they don’t think that Conservatives and republicans have a vision for the future that includes them? Their message will be badly damaged.

Rep Karen Reed (D-CA): I do think that if we look at Republican policies, if we look at the budgets over the last couple of years, there really isn’t anything there that says that we’re going to reach out to the middle class. I mean, in fact…

And this is where it starts…

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The Conventional Wisdom is that the Left loves to think with their hearts while Conservatives’ hearts are with their thinking.  Emotion vs reasoning.  As I said here, however, it seems that while the Democrats may have a show of caring and start lots of Government or Government reliant programs, they don’t want those self-same programs ever to be evaluated.  Those programs MUST work because, well, we just LOVE them!  We KNOW that they work because we feel good about ourselves from having created them.  Therefore, ANYone that criticized our intent must be a hater of whatever we tried to fix.

Facts, being stubborn things, seem not to matter.  And in this case, Mary Katherine Ham (of Hot Air via Betsy’s Page) takes the Obama Administration and its enablers to task for explicitly deciding not to collect the actual data that would tell folks “is this doing what it was originally meant to do” – get the uninsured covered (emphasis mine):

There is no clearer dereliction of duty for this law. They created an irresponsible reform behemoth, they failed to implement it responsibly, they spent irresponsible amounts of money building a bunch of exchanges that don’t work, and now they’re not even responsible enough to bother checking how much help or damage they’ve done with the most straightforward metric available.

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House Republican Leader Comments on Senate Passage of SB413

I forgot to put this up in the aftermath of the Rogue Republicans ™ in the NH State Senate of implementing Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion; from the House Republicans (who must feel that they got their knees cut out from underneath them just like we did, emphasis mine):

CONCORD – House Republican Leader Gene Chandler (R-Bartlett) offered the following statement in reaction to the State Senate vote on SB413, relative to access to health insurance coverage. The bill passed the Senate by a 18-5 vote The bill will likely be heard in the House Finance Committee on Monday.

House Republican Leader Gene Chandler (R-Bartlett)

“House Republicans aren’t convinced this bill is the right solution for New Hampshire. There are a number of Republican members who won’t vote for any program tied to the failed Obamacare law. There are concerns about how the state will be able to pay for this type of entitlement expansion in perpetuity and if that could lead to significant budget problems down the road. This type and scale of program represents the largest increase in spending New Hampshire has seen for some time, and it is dependent on funding from the federal government who can’t seem to keep many promises.”

“If New Hampshire does go down this road,

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As I pointed out here, the Chair of the NH College Republicans, Jake Wagner, has been asked to resign for one simple reason:

He’s not in college.

He hasn’t been in college for quite some time but refuses to relinquish that which he should not have.  I guess this self-proclaimed “Radical RINO” (who doesn’t seem to support much of the Platform much)  has fallen for the last half of that old phrase ” go to get something done or be someone” (the latter meaning that they are more enamored with the title and being known by it.  Sad, really, to have only a title solely define one’s self-esteem or self-worth. That’s why I try to steer away from those folks; I’d rather be involved with folks that are trying to get something accomplished.

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It is well known that the economy in Texas is going gang-busters compared to most of the country fueled (sorry, couldn’t resist) by new fossil fuel production.  I just had to laugh when TX Gov Perry made it known he had no problem in busting on New York and especially California: “low taxes and low regulations – we LIKE business”.  I have watched as blue state after blue state just makes it harder and harder to do what biz is supposed to do: “We have a right to your profits”.  So the Energy Companies are leaving (emphasis mine):

The recent decision by Occidental Petroleum to move its headquarters to Houston from Los Angeles, where it was founded over a half-century ago, confirms the futility and delusion embodied in California’s ultragreen energy policies. By embracing solar and wind as preferred sources of generating power, the state promotes an ever-widening gap between its declining middle- and working-class populations and a smaller, self-satisfied group of environmental campaigners and their corporate backers.

Talk to people who work in the fossil-fuel industry, and they tell you they feel ostracized and even hated; to be an oil firm in California is like being a pork producer in an ultra-Orthodox section of Jerusalem.

One top industry executive told me that many of his colleagues in California cringe at the prospect of being attacked by politicians and activists as something akin to war criminals. “I wouldn’t subject my kids to that environment,” the Gulf Coast-based oilman suggested.

That last remark: “I wouldn’t subject my kids to that environment”

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FIRST!  We applaud those that stood tall and voted against the Morse / Bradley Medicaid  Expansion bill: NH State Senator Andy Sanborn, NH State Senator John Reagan, NH State Senator Sam Cataldo, NH State Senator Sharon Carson, and NH State Senator Russell Prescott.

We’ve been writing for a while that we absolutely believe that if the NH State Senate Republicans were to pass Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion, the Live Free or Die state will be no more.  No, we aren’t going to be physically absorbed by Massachusetts but our Live Free or Die philosophy will continue to die – that Individual  mattered most, that people were responsible for themselves and not on Government. That will now change due to the fecklessnes of the Rogue Republicans ™ that have abandoned pretty much every Plank in the Republican Platform.  Not limited but MORE government, not less but MORE taxes, not being able to be left alone but MORE intrusiveness, not less but MORE debt for our kids to pay off, and not more but LESS choice.  And we can thank NH State Senator Jeb Bradley, NH State Senator Nancy Stiles, NH State Senator Chuck Morse, and NH State Senator Bob Odell.  And their cohorts NH State Senator Jeannie Forrester, NH State Senator David Boutin, and NH State Senator Jim Rausch for it.  They believe this will enhance Republican chances in November.  Ha!  They were warned.  And now the backlash from the Grassroots has started.  From Jerry Delemus of the Rochester 9/12 who is longer willing to “settle” (emphasis mine):

This is what we get when we vote for the lesser of 2 evils. Evil! It was obvious what the traitors to Republican values were going to do and they did, vote with the Democrats just like the 28 in the House did [in DC  -Skip] on extending the debt ceiling.  Message from Establishment to everyone else and especially to conservatives, “we don’t like you and we don’t care one bit about the Republican party platform.”

So here’s a message to you Establishment, “we will not aide the Republican Establishment and we will leave blank any voting boxes for candidates we do not fully trust, no more lesser of 2 evils“.

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This will be the gift that will keep on giving – the Kiss of Death, that is.  To the Republicans, that is.  They just didn’t realize it, all those Smart People in the NH State Senate with Rs after their names that voted to implement Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion (even though they tried to call it other names and used other terms to “market it).  They tried SO hard not to let it be called Medicaid Expansion.

The NH Grassroots are not amused.  Even the Washington Post saw right through this lamo attempt:

In some good news out of New Hampshire, the GOP-controlled state senate has just passed the state’s version of the Medicaid expansion,

Yup.  Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion – breaking the “resist Obamacare at all costs” from the NH GOP Platform.  Yeah, that helps to convince the Grassroots to support you.  But wait!  You ALSO threw all of your supporters under the bus (just like Obama): 

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UNH College Republicans call on self-proclaimed “Radical RINO” NH College Republican Federation Chairman Jake Wagner to resign for violating Federation Constitution regarding college enrollment.

Caveat – I’ve met Jake Wagner (there on the left with Obama’s David Axelrod on right).  Now, he didn’t come up to me and proclaim himself to be a “Radical RINO” (but it is in his Twitter feed) but he certainly came across as one of those “I’m a Republican Republican because I’m a Republican” the couple of times I’ve tried to “debate” issues important to the Republican base.  He certainly doesn’t like Conservatives that quote both the Platform and the NH Constitution (or the US one either) as a basis of what can be done or what should be done politically.  His face would screw up like a prune, his arms flap like one of those “air guys” you’d see flapping in front of a car dealer, and he just couldn’t seem to stop “SIGHing” as I was speaking – but  couldn’t seem to refute what I or others would pose to him.  Just pieces of paper “for show” is the what I got from him.

Figures.  Looks like he’s decided to disobey the rules under which he was elected – his previous actions seem to give this that came over the transom a bit more ring of truth – looks like I’ll be following up on this myself.

Note: if it is wrong, Jake is certainly able to put up a guest post here or even come on GrokTALK! to discuss – he has been invited!

In fact, he has not responded to the email listed on the NH GOP E-Board page.  So, let’s look at this a bit, shall we? 

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Over at the Republican Liberty Caucus of NH was this request for info:

Windham GOP is considering their Medicaid resolution on the night Chuck Morse is their guest speaker

Senator Chuck Morse, prime sponsor of the medicaid expansion bill, will be at a special Windham Republican Committee meeting this Tuesday, March 4th at 6pm. We’re supposed to debate the merits of medicaid expansion. Any hard-hitting talking points you can recommend?

So I offered a few questions that could be asked:

WHY are you doing this? Is it really to merely take it off the table politically to smooth the way for re-election (like Boenher & boys did in DC with the debt ceiling)?

Is getting re-elected worth advancing the Democrat agenda by getting Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion implemented in NH? Isn’t that rather selfish: career before Party?

WHY is the Federal money going to go “off-budget”? Does that mean that the STate of NH will have no oversight?

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