links for 2010-11-12

Democrats think they know how to run the insurance industry better than the insurance industry, and they're getting the chance to prove it under ObamaCare. Consider the early returns on its plan to insure Americans denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

To judge by President Obama's rhetoric, the insurance industry's victims have been wandering the country like Okies in "The Grapes of Wrath." Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare's broader regulations kick in.
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As an RNC member, the choice is yours as the outcome will be determined, in large part, by which party has the resources and the organizational program to prevail.

If you believe that what we have seen at the RNC the past two years is good enough to provide us a victory in 2012 then by all means you should stick with our current leadership and direction.

But if you agree with me that victory in 2012 requires a new set of priorities and new leadership I hope you will consider supporting my candidacy for RNC Chairman.
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Will Michael Steele run for a second term?

Kentucky Republican Senator-elect Rand Paul is already making waves in Washington, D.C. with plans to organize either a Senate or bicameral Tea Party Caucus
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Paul said he’s been chatting with several people from Kentucky about laying down a communications blueprint to keep the grassroots Tea Partiers nationwide in touch with their newly elected senators and representatives about what’s going on inside the Beltway. Paul told The Daily Caller he plans to start by forming a “nucleus” of conservative senators and then reach out to colleagues in the House.
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Tea Party Patriots (TPP), a national umbrella organization of local Tea Party groups, is asking its members to call Republican senators and demand that they agree in a caucus vote next Tuesday to forgo all earmarks in the upcoming Congress. In an e-mail to their 134,000 online members headlined, "Our first battle with the newly empowered GOP," the group's national coordinators single out for phone calls the two highest-ranking Republicans in the Senate, among others.
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As they should