Veterans Day Open Thread [11.11.13]

I would like to thank on this Veterans Day my grandfathers Jake and Daniel, my grandmother Kathryn (who served as an Army nurse in Louisiana during World War II), uncles Lew and Charles, as well as many friends, who have served our country in the Armed Forces. As a nation, we can never repay the debt we owe our veterans. The best we can do is work hard to be worthy of their sacrifice. And now, to do what many of them signed up to protect: freely debating politics and our government’s policies.

“I am pro-life. I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children’s future and their ability to provide for that future. I care about life and I have a record of fighting for people above all else.”

That was Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. We all know that “pro-life” Republicans only care about the baby up until to the moment he or she is born. After that, they are on their own.

The law is working as intended in some areas, like helping the disadvantaged:

Notices went out Tuesday to more than 40,000 food-stamp recipients informing them that they have been automatically assigned to a private health-insurance plan under the state’s expanded Medicaid program, the state Department of Human Services announced. The automatic enrollments take the number of newly eligible people who have been added to the Medicaid program for coverage that will start Jan. 1 to 53,462.

That includes 49,151 who chose or were assigned to a private plan and 4,311 who were assigned to the traditional program because of they were deemed to have exceptional health needs…

…The expansion of the Medicaid program, authorized by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and approved by the Legislature this year, extended eligibility for coverage to about 250,000 adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level – $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four. Most of those who enroll are expected to be able to sign up for a private plan on the state’s health-insurance exchange and have their premium paid by Medicaid. About 10 percent – those identified as “medically frail” because of their health-care needs – will be assigned to the traditional Medicaid program.

The 40,405 who were assigned to a plan Tuesday are among 145,000 recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program who received letters from the department in September informing them that they are eligible for coverage under the expanded program.

Those who responded and said they wanted coverage were sent a notice giving them 12 days to visit a state website, insureark.org, where they would be asked to complete a questionnaire designed to identify the medically frail. Applicants who are not found to be medically frail can then use the website to sign up for a plan.

The automatic assignments affect 38,376 people who indicated that they wanted coverage but did not visit the website, as well as 2,029 who completed the questionnaire but failed to select a plan after it was determined they were not medically frail.

How many of those 53,000 people who will now be receiving free health insurance are typical white Obama-hating southerners who listen to Glenn Beck and Mark Levin on their way to work?

Jason is acting all scaredy-cat about Chris Christie. Pfft. Chris Christie is the next Rudy Guiliani. He won’t be competitive for the nomination. Jonathan Chait agrees:

His ideological deviations are not fake. They’re real. Christie has openly endorsed gun control, called for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and conceded the legitimacy of climate science (“But when you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it’s time to defer to the experts.”) The largest, and least appreciated, of Christie’s betrayals of party doctrine is his decision to participate in the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. Some other Republican governors have made the same decision, but they have all faced unrelenting and bitter opposition from legislators of their party and conservative activists. Unyielding hatred to every aspect of Obamacare, regardless of its practical impact, has become the main doctrinal tenet of conservative thought. That alone could potentially disqualify him.

Josh Marshall also agrees:

The ‘different kind of conservative’ who runs at least in part against his own party’s crazies on Capitol Hill after a big reelection victory is what took George W. Bush to the White House. But Bush had Texas, evangelical Christianity and the ambiguously powerful cachet of the Bush family name to make the whole thing work. On a national level he was running in part against DC conservatism. But the party’s base, for many reasons, always knew that he was one of them on tax policy, hot-button social issues and national security. That’s not the case for Christie. He’s a quintessential Northeasterner with a coarse version of the region’s regional edge in a party dominated by the South. I just don’t see that happening.

Dickerson:

The overarching worry among conservatives will be that no matter what the issue, a man who makes such a fetish of his ability to work with Democrats is going to sell out conservatives in the end. This tension has been at the core of the fight between the Republican Party establishment and grassroots since the 1940s. Sometimes that fight is about policy, but often the candidates are so close in their positions that the fight is more about personality and tactics.

A quote from Michael Bowen’s Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party brings this home. “It is important to bear in mind that the major political controversies today do not center about objectives,” said a Republican staffer, “but mainly about methods of attaining objectives.” That was a quote from more than 60 years ago, but could just as easily apply to last month’s fight over defunding Obamacare.

Conservatives in the GOP, and the Tea Party (which are really the same thing but whatevs), feel that they had to swallow hard and hold their nose for John McCain and Mitt Romney. They will not accept another establishment candidate who is a RINO and closet Democrat, which in their eyes, Chris Christie is. Chris Christie also had the audacity to appoint a qualified Muslim to the judiciary in New Jersey instead of killing him upon sight. How dare he!!! He works with Democrats instead of killing them??!!!??

No, Chris Christie will not be the nominee of the GOP in 2016.