United Liberty

As we said during our live-blog on Saturday and as Jeff Scott noted earlier today, Republicans made a mistake in supporting the Stupak Amendment to ObamaCare. It ultimately caused the bill to pass out of the House, as several pundits and reports said that Democrats didn’t have the votes to move HR 3962 without it.

Erick Erickson from Red State, a hub for conservatives in the blogosphere, takes aim at his own for supporting this amendment, and ostensibly allowing ObamaCare to pass the House:

It is more and more clear that the House of Representatives will not keep Bart Stupak’s amendment in the health care legislation.

Harry Reid will put something abortion related in the Senate version, but not so strong as to turn off pro-abortion Senators. Likewise, Obama is already saying this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill, and is instructing Congress not to go overboard.

Stupak will go out. National Right to Life, as per its usual operating procedure, will no doubt eek out some sort of minor compromise that undercuts the rest of the conservative movement and other pro-life groups — a compromise that does very little, but from which NRLC can raise some money. Abortions will get funded by the feds if Obamacare passes. You can bank on it.

Let me be clear to the conservative movement and the organizations participating in the health care debate: the fight over health care is about freedom, not your ridiculous little scorecards.

[…]

On and on, for each issue the GOP raises to be addressed in the bill, the Democrats and a token Republican will play accommodationist as the media fawns over the bipartisan nature of each compromise.

The danger is that the GOP will start with the presupposition that the health care bill will pass and work to “improve” it. The GOP must get out of that mindset. Republicans working toward destroying legislation they believe will inevitably pass will not destroy the legislation.

At the end of the day, the GOP must flat out oppose the government take over of 1/6th of the American economy. Instead of clamoring for issues to be addressed, the GOP must contrast freedom with the tyranny of the legislation. The tea party activists and conservatives are already convinced. Senate Republicans must now make the case to independent voters already leery of the Democrats’ big government agenda that Obamacare is not a prescription to cure the nation’s health care problems.

Well said.

The good news is it’s dead-on-arrival in the Senate, but we need to be on the look out because anything can happen.