Republican rift widens on Medicare

Republican rift widens on Medicare
By Alexander Bolton - 05/10/11 06:00 AM ET


A deep rift is opening wider and wider in the Republican Party over controversial proposals to cut Medicare.

Senate Republicans have decided to avoid jeopardizing their chances of capturing the upper chamber in next year’s elections and will not echo the House GOP’s call for a major overhaul of the popular health entitlement for seniors.

The Senate Republican decision to split from their colleagues in the lower chamber comes after a month during which Democrats, led by President Obama, have excoriated House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) spending blueprint.

Ryan’s Medicare plan, supported by all but four House Republicans, has been panned by Democrats as a voucher program that “would end Medicare as we know it.”

more...

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/medicare/160125-republican-rift-widens-on-medicare

Even some of the 'pukes understand what will happen to them.

Well, one *silver lining*, of course, is that this will probably make the Tea Party mad at them and, hopefully, subject a lot of them to primary challengers (or depress the turnout for them). I believe that Snowe and Lugar already have people looking to dethrone them. I just found out that we may actually have a *real* Democratic candidate announcing a run against Lugar next year, which suggests that he may actually be vulnerable to losing a primary challenge (or at least stands to be weakened by one). I generally like Lugar and have voted for him in the past but if we have a credible Democratic challenger (for once), I'm going to vote Democratic next year. If we end up with a teabagger candidate here for US Senate, it could actually be a Democratic pickup if the year's otherwise looking good for us. Anybody know how things are looking over there in Maine in terms of Snowe? Any chance of a primary knockoff? :shrug:

I know that this is slightly OT but this whole teabagger phenomenon is bizarre. The Republicans can take the most ultraconservative positions on everything and say "no" to everything President Obama and/or the Democrats propose but any signs of intelligence, careful deliberation on any issue, or any suggestion that they might be willing to work across the aisle to get something important accomplished is completely anathema to the teabaggers. This makes me pretty glad that, with few exceptions, we accept and tolerate differences of opinion in our party.