Obama and Trump: the wild MSM pendulum swing

The New Neo Posted on by

A few days ago I was thinking how extreme the media has become, beginning during the Obama years. That’s not to say that, prior to Obama’s candidacy, the media was trustworthy or objective. But I noticed that with Obama it became ever more obvious that the media was almost worshipful of him and increasingly unafraid to reveal that fact.

And with the advent of the Trump candidacy, the MSM pendulum has swung even further in the opposite direction. It’s not that Donald Trump is above criticism—au contraire, and I’ve done my bit here to add to that. But let the criticism be warranted, proportionate to the offense, and let it be based on fact.

That’s not the media’s approach, although it would have you believe it is.

But yesterday Victor Davis Hanson put it better than I could have, so I’ll leave it to him:

Between 2008 and 2016, the media were unapologetic about their adoration of President Barack Obama. Now, they are energized by their thorough loathing of President Donald Trump. In tragic fashion, the hubris of deifying Obama has now come full circle to the nemesis of demonizing Trump. The common denominator of the two extremes is the abandonment of disinterested reporting…

If the media became unhinged in the adulatory Obama years through hubris, it might have earned back its respect and professionalism by covering Trump in even-handed fashion. But Nemesis does not work that way: those it destroys, it first makes mad.

Please read the whole thing.

I would add a few observations, though. The first is that the press didn’t have much credibility even before Obama’s election, although I agree it destroyed the last shards of lingering respect by its behavior during his administration. However, plenty of people still trust the press in the sense that they believe most or at least much of what it prints. There are other people who are subtly influenced by its propaganda whether they admire it or not. Propaganda can work that way, just as advertisements can work that way, and it can sometimes operate without the person even realizing what’s happening.

My second observation is that part of the press’s extreme antipathy to Trump comes from their sense of utter shock at his election. Not only did they consider him a travesty, and an evil one at that, but the vast majority of them were completely convinced that his election was quite literally impossible.

For example, we have Rachel Maddow speaking to her viewers on the night of the election, when the reality of the Trump presidency had set in and yet not set in:

I maintain that they have never accepted that “this is real.” It’s something they believe is a bad dream that they can wish away, talk away, and above all write away. The pen is mightier than the sword—after all, they slayed the dragon once before (Nixon), and he was a legitimate president with a bona fide political history. I believe they reason that Trump—with all his manifold and obvious flaws—should be a much easier target.

Heroes, military and otherwise: the case of John McCain

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Frog” has a question about what makes a hero:

What makes a military hero? What defines heroism? Was McCain in ”˜Nam a Sgt. York equivalent? York risked life and limb many times in accomplishing victories in combat and saving lives of his fellow soldiers. Was York an equal to those that suffered in the trenches, getting gassed or getting trench foot or both, never being able to ”˜take it to the enemy’?

Those are interesting questions, because there are indeed many kinds of heroism as well as many kinds of courage for those who serve in the military. I would say that strictly military heroism involves heroism (bravery and acceptance of risk) in the accomplishment of military exploits—that is, fighting the enemy. It is usually defined actively—not just by slogging it out in a trench but by engaging the enemy more directly—although even those in the trenches could be called “heroic” in terms of endurance.

Then there’s heroism in terms of saving fellow military members (or civilians). That’s a sort of heroism that is sometimes performed by those in combat but can also be shown by medical personnel or chaplains, who have received medals for such exploits.

Then, of course, there’s the sort of heroism—or courage, or character, or all of the above—shown by McCain and others as a military member while a prisoner of war. This can involve not just endurance of a truly exceptional nature, but defiance and self-sacrifice.

I maintain that John McCain showed all three types of heroism during his military service, although to differing degrees. The part of his story that is most well-known is the prisoner-of-war part, but it’s not the only part. McCain didn’t have all that much of a chance to be a hero in the strictly conventional sense of a military (combat) hero because he saw so little service outside of his prisoner of war status. But he made the most of the short time available to him.

McCain volunteered for combat duty. He was sent to Vietnam to serve as a pilot on the carrier Forrestal in May of 1967. The ship got to Vietnam on around July 25, 1967. McCain flew five successful missions. On July 29, 1967, the following disaster occurred:

McCain was almost killed on board Forrestal on July 29, 1967. While the air wing was preparing to launch attacks, a Zuni rocket from an F-4 Phantom accidentally fired across the carrier’s deck. The rocket struck either McCain’s A-4E Skyhawk or one near it. The impact ruptured the Skyhawk’s fuel tank, which ignited the fuel and knocked two bombs loose. McCain later said, “I thought my aircraft exploded. Flames were everywhere.” McCain escaped from his jet by climbing out of the cockpit, working himself to the nose of the jet, and jumping off its refueling probe onto the burning deck. His flight suit caught on fire as he rolled through the flames, but he was able to put it out. He went to help another pilot trying to escape the fire when the first bomb exploded; McCain was thrown backwards ten feet (three meters) and suffered minor wounds when struck in the legs and chest by fragments. McCain helped crewmen throw unexploded bombs overboard off the hangar deck elevator, then went to Forrestal’s ready room and with other pilots watched the ensuing fire and the fire-fighting efforts on the room’s closed-circuit television. The fire killed 134 sailors, injured scores of others, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and took 24 hours to control.

That may not be Sergeant York territory, but it sounds pretty heroic to me, especially in the second sense (attempting to save other people).

Not to mention the next assignment for which McCain also volunteered:

As Forrestal headed to port for repairs, McCain volunteered to join the undermanned VA-163 “Saints” squadron on board the USS Oriskany. This carrier had earlier endured its own deck fire disaster and its squadrons had suffered some of the heaviest losses during Rolling Thunder. The Saints had a reputation for aggressive, daring attacks, but paid the price: in 1967, one-third of their pilots were killed or captured, and all of their original fifteen A-4s had been destroyed.

I would argue that it takes a certain amount of bravery to volunteer for that kind of mission. It may not be heroism, but it’s not too far behind.

In his short stint of service with that group, McCain’s record wasn’t heroic enough to draw exceptional attention, but it certainly was heroic enough for me. Remember when you read this that he didn’t join Oriskany until September 30 of 1967, so the time frame of all this activity is very compressed:

He volunteered to fly the squadron’s most dangerous missions right away, rather than work his way up to them. During October 1967, the pilots operated in constant twelve-hour on, twelve-hour off shifts. McCain would be awarded a Navy Commendation Medal for leading his air section through heavy enemy fire during an October 18 raid on the Lac Trai shipyard in Haiphong. On October 25, McCain successfully attacked the Phéºc Yéªn Air Base north of Hanoi through a barrage of anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missile fire; credited with destroying one aircraft on the ground and damaging two, the raid would garner him the Bronze Star. Air defenses around Hanoi were at this point the strongest they would be during the entire war.

McCain was shot down less than one month after arriving for his Oriskany tour. Here are the circumstances:

On October 26, 1967, McCain was flying his twenty-third mission, part of a twenty-plane strike force against the Yen Phu thermal power plant in central Hanoi that previously had almost always been off-limits to U.S. raids due to the possibility of collateral damage. Arriving just before noon, McCain dove from 9,000 to 4,000 feet on his approach;[105] as he neared the target, warning systems in McCain’s A-4E Skyhawk alerted him that he was being tracked by enemy fire-control radar. Like other U.S. pilots in similar situations, he did not break off the bombing run, and he held his dive until he released his bombs at about 3,500 feet (1,000 m). As he started to pull up, the Skyhawk’s wing was blown off by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile fired by the North Vietnamese Air Defense Command’s 61st Battalion…

I have no problem assigning the word “hero” and/or “heroic” to John McCain.

Someone might have pointed out some of these facts to armchair critic Donald J. Trump, the man who joked that he fought his own personal Vietnam by fending off the perils of venereal disease while boffing a variety of models.

[NOTE: I figure I don’t need to describe McCain’s heroism as a prisoner of war. The story is quite well-known, but you can find a short summary here.]

Mueller stretches

The New Neo Posted on by

With the caveat “if this report is true” (something we have to state more and more frequently these days about MSM news), Special Counsel Mueller appears to be doing exactly what was predicted would happen when he was appointed: going on a fishing expedition against Trump:

John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers, said on Thursday that he was unaware of the inquiry into Trump’s businesses by the two-months-old investigation and considered it beyond the scope of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be examining.

“Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code,” he wrote in an email.

William Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection has a lengthy post today about this. And in late June, Andrew C. McCarthy wrote extensively on the subject of the way-too-broad scope of the Mueller investigation, which I discussed here.

That’s why, when I first looked at the headline of today’s Bloomberg article (“Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions”), I immediately thought “There it is.”

Jeff Sessions and civil forfeiture

The New Neo Posted on by

The topic is way outside of my field of expertise, but this position of Jeff Sessions sounds like a bad, bad idea:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions should reconsider his plan to expand the use of civil asset forfeiture in the service of the so-called war on drugs. If he fails to do so, Congress should reconsider it for him ”” indeed, Congress ought to act on asset-forfeiture reform irrespective of the attorney general’s views on the matter.

Asset forfeiture is a constitutionally questionable practice whereby property ”” often cash ”” is taken from citizens by police agencies who suspect, or at least say they suspect, that the property may have been come by illegally, often through the drug trade. Cash seized through asset forfeiture can be used by police departments, as can cash generated through the sales of seized property such as vehicles. The fact that police personnel can materially benefit from forfeiture proceedings creates a conflict of interest that would render forfeiture problematic even if it were used with discretion in accordance with the highest degree of procedural protections for the rights of the accused.

It isn’t…

The specific issue here mainly touches on Sessions’s plan to revoke certain Obama-era restrictions on asset forfeiture. In response to the general unjustness of asset forfeiture and specific cases of abuse associated with it, many states have limited the use of the process, and 13 of them require an actual criminal conviction before seizing assets. But the federal government offered police agencies operating under more restrictive state rules an out in the form of cooperative seizures ”” “equitable sharing,” they call it ”” under which federal authorities accepted seized assets in a cooperative capacity and then shared them with local agencies. Which is to say, the federal government set up a program of official money-laundering in order to make an end run around state laws. Cute, that. The Obama-era reforms cut back on that, and Sessions means to return to the status quo ante as part of an aggressive new campaign to expand the use of forfeiture against drug traffickers.

Which is to say, conservatives should object to this on due-process grounds and on Tenth Amendment grounds ”” if the states wish to restrict the use of asset forfeiture, then Washington has no business interfering.

Sessions appears to be letting his determination to fight drug traffic cloud his vision considerably. He needs to drop this particular crusade.

This is not something new for Sessions, either. He was singing the same song in December of 2016, against much the same negative reaction from all sides.

John McCain diagnosed with brain tumor

The New Neo Posted on by

John McCain is a controversial figure within the Republican Party. Although he was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 (or maybe because of it), he’s disliked and even hated by many conservatives because he’s the quintessential RINO, the “reach across the aisle” guy who often undercuts conservative positions.

And yet he’s got a history that makes most people admire him (except, perhaps, Donald Trump, but let’s not go there) when he was a prisoner of war for 5 1/2 long years in what was sarcastically called “The Plantation.” You can find some of the story here, and it shows an impressive strength of character and body:

They took me out of my room to “Slopehead,” who said, “You have violated all the camp regulations. You’re a black criminal. You must confess your crimes.” I said that I wouldn’t do that, and he asked, “Why are you so disrespectful of guards?” I answered, “Because the guards treat me like an animal.”

When I said that, the guards, who were all in the room””about 10 of them””really laid into me. They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes. Then I was taken to a small room. For punishment they would almost always take you to another room where you didn’t have a mosquito net or a bed or any clothes. For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.

They wanted a statement saying that I was sorry for the crimes that I had committed against North Vietnamese people and that I was grateful for the treatment that I had received from them. This was the paradox””so many guys were so mistreated to get them to say they were grateful. But this is the Communist way.

I held out for four days. Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5½ years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I was reaching the end of my rope.

I said, O.K., I’ll write for them.

They took me up into one of the interrogation rooms, and for the next 12 hours we wrote and rewrote. The North Vietnamese interrogator, who was pretty stupid, wrote the final confession, and I signed it. It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities. It was unacceptable to them. But I felt just terrible about it. I kept saying to myself, “Oh, God, I really didn’t have any choice.” I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.

Then the “gooks” made a very serious mistake, because they let me go back and rest for a couple of weeks. They usually didn’t do that with guys when they had them really busted. I think it concerned them that my arm was broken, and they had messed up my leg. I had been reduced to an animal during this period of beating and torture. My arm was so painful I couldn’t get up off the floor. With the dysentery, it was a very unpleasant time.

Thank God they let me rest for a couple of weeks. Then they called me up again and wanted something else. I don’t remember what it was now””it was some kind of statement. This time I was able to resist. I was able to carry on. They couldn’t “bust” me again.

McCain was left with permanent injuries from his time as a prisoner.

Now he’s been diagnosed with an aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma. The prognosis is not good although the tumor was apparently removed during a surgery; the average survival time of glioblastoma patients after diagnosis is 14 months with treatment, although 10% live 5 years or longer. I’d bet on McCain surviving longer than average for two reasons.

The first is that he’s tough, and the second is that it appears his tumor may have been diagnosed earlier than usual and before he had any symptoms except a blood clot and some problems mild enough that most people would not even have gone to a doctor about them. He was visiting the physician as part of routine periodic screenings he has for possible recurrence of the melanomas that have plagued him for about nearly two decades.

I have some political quarrels with John McCain, but I very much hope he recovers and lives much longer than average, symptom-free.

[NOTE: The photo at the top of this post is of McCain in a Hanoi hospital shortly after he was taken prisoner in October of 1967.]

Deja vu all over again: coverage of Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

I read roundups of the news every day, and I continually get that deja vu feeling.

Sometimes I even wonder if I’m looking at a cached version of the news. But no; there are a few themes that are rammed home day and day after day.

The first is the “Trump administration is in chaos” theme. A subset of this is the theme “Trump is going crazy and is dreadfully unhappy” or “Some member of the administration or relative of Trump is going crazy and is dreadfully unhappy.”

Then there’s the “Republicans will lose in 2018” theme.

After that we have the “Democrats lost in 2016 because they failed to successfully spin things to better appeal to those racist, bigoted, stupid white people in the rust belt, and next time we should do a better job of pretending to serve those idiots” articles.

Next we have the perennial favorite “The world hates us even more than before because of Trump.”

Lastly we have “Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia.”

I’m sure I missed a few. But those are the basics.

The Obamacare repeal/replace collapse: not so fast, Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

Democrats couldn’t be happier about the failure and disarray of the Republicans on dealing with Obamacare. But this editorial in Investor’s Business Daily warns them to be careful what they wish for. The title is “Democrats Will Soon Regret That Republicans Failed To Repeal ObamaCare,” and the idea is that Obamacare is failing on its own and Democrats may come to rue the day the Republicans failed to rescue them by reforming it:

It was amusing to hear Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer say, after the Senate bill failed, that Republicans should “work with Democrats on a bill that lowers premiums, provides long-term stability to the markets and improves our health care system.”

Lower premiums, stabilize insurance markets, improve health care? Wasn’t that what ObamaCare was supposed to do in the first place?

The article goes on to list a host of indications that Obamacare is sinking even further. And then:

…[W]ith repeal-and-replace now off the table, all we have left is the self-destructing ObamaCare. Don’t be surprised if ObamaCare’s popularity suddenly nose-dives again.

So the GOP’s answer to Schumer should be: You had your chance to fix health care. You blew it. Twice. First when you passed ObamaCare, and second when you refused to admit that mistake and decided to cast Republicans as evil. Why should the GOP reward you with a third?

But is “repeal and replace now off the table”? There are rumblings that the “repeal” part is only mostly dead. “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead,” said Billy Crystal in “The Princess Bride,” and it may be true for the repeal effort or even the repeal and replace effort (see this, for example).

Whatever happens to Democrats as a result of the Republicans’ failure to repeal and/or to “fix” Obamacare, there’s little question that at least for now there’s a lot of anger being expressed by the GOP rank and file towards those Republican lawmakers. It’s understandable, and it’s virulent. This isn’t new, however. Contempt for and rage at Congressional Republicans has been widespread on the right as far back as I can remember in my political life since my political change.

One of the many angry things said by people on the right about the Republicans in Congress is that the two parties are the same and that there is no difference between them. But on the contrary, I think it’s actually this way:

It becomes obvious, once again, that Republicans and Democrats are two parties ”” separate and distinct, with different drive wheels, different motives. They play different games.

Democrats are naturals when it comes to offense; they love to batter down doors and burn down barns to get done those things they have decided for one reason or another need doing, such as the creation of a program of federally subsidized health care.

Republicans by temperament play defense; they hold that line ”” or fail to hold it ”” and then fall back to work out terms that might make the situation a little less disagreeable than it was before. Republicans are never entirely unhappy with half a loaf. They think on how much less than half they could have gotten. The notion of wrestling away the whole loaf and digesting it happily in front of the Democrats inspires comparatively few Republicans. They’d rather deal ”” a preference that comes naturally to the business, front-office types who make the party their home….

The first is short-term. The GOP swore in blood to get rid of Obamacare. It starts to look as if a number of the oath-takers had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

I would quarrel with the phrase “starts to look,” because the Republican rank and file has been feeling for over a decade that every time the GOP members of Congress say they will do something they’ve got “their fingers crossed behind their backs.” The distrust is way up there with distrust of the MSM, and that’s saying something. It wasn’t going to be repaired by something as simple as repealing Obamacare or passing some bill that reformed it and made it more market-friendly. Either of those things probably would have helped a tiny bit, but the praise would have been grudging and much fault would have been found with the details of the thing.

Maybe you think I’m naive and too trusting of the GOP in Congress. I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why. I don’t feel the same depth of outrage at them for the simple reason that I never invested much trust in them in the first place. I feel that way about politicians in general, and I think the legislative process is inherently slow and difficult and is capable of being derailed by a few dissenters (particularly if the party doesn’t hold an overwhelming majority in the legislature).

Sometime there’s a failure of will on the part of the members of Congress, sometimes a failure of execution, and sometimes both. It’s not always easy to tell which is operating at any given moment. But I’m not naive; I’m cynical.

Is the Obamacare repeal/replace effort over? Maybe for the moment. But I think Congress will return to this problem, sooner or later.

This shooting by a police officer doesn’t fit the narrative

The New Neo Posted on by

Another fatal shooting by a police officer, of a civilian who doesn’t seem to have been doing anything wrong.

But this one has a twist that defies the expectations of the usual activists, although they are creative enough to try to turn it around to their advantage:

Whenever a police officer shoots a civilian under questionable circumstances, one question looms large: How can our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters frame the narrative to advance liberal agenda items? When a white cop shoots a black person, of course that’s racism. When a black cop shoots a black person, then that’s institutionalized racism. But what if it’s a black Muslim cop shooting a white person?

That’s what happened in Minnesota on Saturday night, when Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor shot an Australian woman named Justine Damond behind her home after she called 911 to report a possible assault nearby. A lot of things about the story don’t add up: Damond has in her pajamas and didn’t have a weapon, the police say there’s no footage from the patrol cruiser’s dashcam or the body cameras that Noor and his partner were wearing, and Noor has had several complaints filed against him since joining the force in 2015…

When a Hispanic police officer named Jeronimo Yanez shot Minneapolis resident Philando Castile last year (which I found indefensible), it was easy to fold that into the ongoing Black Lives Matter narrative. Yanez isn’t white, but close enough. But this one is a bit more tricky. This one requires a bit more finesse.

How is the left dealing with it? Why, they’re talking about how afraid the local Muslim community (particularly the Somalian community, because the officer was Somalian) is of a backlash of hatred against Somalians.

All these shootings need to be investigated. If there was wrongdoing on the part of the officer, that officer should be punished. If not, let’s find that out as well. But is it too much to ask that these incidents not always be spun and spun and spun to the left’s advantage? Yes, apparently it is too much to ask.

Praying for the president

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s come to this:

“Theological heresy” to pray for Trump?

Wouldn’t it depend on what you prayed? I thought prayers were often on the order of prayers for guidance and wisdom. Wouldn’t that be an especially appropriate prayer for even (or maybe especially) your political enemies?

Rev. Barber is a political activist, a “progressive” who had previously been called by historian and professor Timothy Tyson “the most important progressive political leader in this state (NC) in generations” who “built a statewide interracial fusion political coalition.” I don’t doubt for a moment that he’s a “progressive political leader.” But he also is a pastor, and although I’m neither a pastor nor particularly knowledgeable about them, I cannot imagine that saying that a president should not be prayed for is good Christian theology. And how can it be “heresy”? That term refers to a matter of doctrine and there’s no issue of doctrine here that I can see.

Reverend Barber didn’t stop there, either. As you might imagine, he had a lot more to say, although most outlets are focusing on that sound bite. Here’s some of the rest:

“When we have this extremist Trump Republican agenda that takes health care, transfers wealth to the greedy, that’s hypocrisy and sin,” he told Ms. Reid. “Seven hundred billion dollars, Joy? You haven’t seen that kind of transfer of wealth on the backs of bodies of people since the days of slavery. Claiming to care about life, but then passing a bill when you know thousands will die ”” 22 million people, poor, working people will be hurt ”” that is hypocrisy and sin.

“Passing bills that hurt children, the disabled and veterans ”” that is sin. That is hypocrisy,” he continued. “And what leaders ought to be doing is challenging the president, challenging [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, and challenging [House Speaker Paul] Ryan and challenging these senators and others and not trying to appease them. Instead, they’re acting like priests of the empire rather than prophets of God.”

The usual leftist stuff. And I think perhaps the Reverend was looking in the mirror when he spoke that last sentence.

Back to the drawing board on health insurance reform

The New Neo Posted on by

The recent GOP efforts have been Shakespearean:

…It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Actually, that’s harsher than my own opinion of what’s been going on—although it seems to be a good description of the opinion of what a lot of other people on the right think: that is, that the GOP members of Congress are idiots or even worse.

I happen to think that they are politicians, although rather ineffective ones at the moment, but that’s not quite the same thing as “idiots.” Among them you find varying degrees of honesty and corruption, narcissism and service, pragmatism and principle. In addition, there are some very different political philosophies among members of the GOP that can make it inherently difficult for them to come together on a vote.

As though that’s not enough, in the case of health insurance reform, you have some additional problems. The subject is both complex and deeply emotional, so any “solution” would be a compromise that doesn’t give people what the majority seems to wishfully want: coverage that is cheap and still comprehensive, painless, and kind to all. The more conservative solutions are excoriated as too cruel, and the more liberal solutions as too expensive. And “unfair” is the cry that hangs over everything.

But the GOP is in charge now (be careful what you wish for). And it had better come up with something. Right now that “something” isn’t any of the “replace” bills in House or Senate—it’s a return to a simpler concept, “repeal” and kick the can down the road on the specifics of what might replace it.

You can see a spectrum of coverage here; it’s not a pretty sight.

Paul Mirengoff analyzes the situation and doesn’t think the chances for stand-alone repeal look much better, either:

Majority Leader McConnell might push for a vote on repeal coupled with the House bill (the AHCA) as the default to take effect in two years if no other replacement legislation is agreed upon. Ed Morrissey discusses this option here.

It’s doubtful that this approach could garner 50 Senate votes. GOP Senators rejected the AHCA out-of-hand, instead setting out on the rocky road that has led them nowhere. Susan Collins and some center-right members consider it too draconian. Some conservatives think it doesn’t go far enough. For example, it does not contain the “choice” provision that Ted Cruz demanded.

There’s also the question of whether the House would support such legislation. Sure, it passed once. But as Ed notes, some of the 217 Republicans who barely pushed the AHCA over the finish line did so in the expectation that Senate Republicans would create a better approach to repeal and replacement.

Remember back when Obamacare was first passed, and many pundits declared that the American public would get used to it over time, and that it would be very hard to change it once that had happened? That’s true, I think, and the GOP knows it. The more conservative wing of the GOP doesn’t care; the more liberal wing does.

But although this reflects the results of Obamacare, it’s not just a result. It’s a pre-existing condition, as it were. These conservative/liberal splits within the party have been going on for many decades, long predating Obamacare, and that’s part of the reason that the GOP never was able to come up with a comprehensive health insurance reform bill back in that tiny window of time when it had control of Congress. Instead, it passed Medicare Part D. You can read some of the legislative history of that bill here; suffice to say it only passed by the skin of its teeth, with a lot of arm-twisting. A great many conservatives hated the bill at the time and regarded it as a betrayal. But it represented an effort by the GOP to get some credit for being kinder and gentler—not that they’ve ever gotten that much credit for it at all.

One of the interesting things about Medicare Part D is that the program is widely considered a success (you may disagree, but I’m talking about general perceptions). It’s not that much older than Obamacare (Part D was passed in 2003), and yet I virtually never hear talk of repealing it. If you Google “is Medicare Part D successful?” you will come up with tons of articles that answer “yes.” I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of the program here, though; I just want to say that most people have accepted it and a great many people who like it forget that it was passed by Republicans (some conservatives, of course, are still mad at the GOP because they consider the program too liberal and too expensive).

Back in 2003, Republican leaders Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert were in charge, and reportedly they (particularly DeLay) were a lot more—-shall we say, forceful—in convincing members to go along. McConnell and Ryan may not be so good at that sort of thing, or perhaps members of the GOP have grown more impervious to the threats and other persuasive devices brought to bear.

It’s easy to observe that Democrats seem to be able to corral their members much more effectively when it’s time to take a controversial vote. That’s the way Obamacare was passed, after all. But I think there is a much smaller percentage of so-called “moderate” Democrats to begin with, and much greater ideological unity on the Democratic side, and therefore the task is easier. And for the Republicans, the “no” votes came from the extremes of both sides, both the conservative and moderate wings of the party.

I can’t predict what will happen next. But I do know that for the moment the Democrats are gloating.