links for 2011-02-08

Deepening a rift ahead of the largest annual gathering of conservative activists in Washington this week, some of the movement’s top leaders have circulated a private memo urging that conservatism’s founding principles be recast to exclude gay rights groups from the Reagan coalition of economic, defense and social conservatives.

The memo, obtained by The Washington Times, was signed by about two dozen leaders, and was released just as the Conservative Political Action Conference is set to begin its most contentious session in years, riven with divisions over a gay rights Republican group that is helping sponsor the conference and the social conservatives who are trying to keep it out.

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I don't think this impasse will be easily resolved

The company that fired Reagan for speaking out against big government is celebrating the seminal speech in which he does the same, while the company’s CEO enjoys his spot in President Obama’s inner circle.

Reagan mythology comes from across the political spectrum and we will likely never agree on his political legacy. But Reagan was a clear and outspoken critic of government-driven corporatism. GE’s misappropriation of Reagan’s iconic speech reveals just how far they’ve strayed from his message. It’s representative of either a company that has gone entirely tone deaf or an acrobatic attempt at a revisionist Reagan history.

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Ge is all over the place as long as there is $$$ in it for them.

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on whether to block funding for President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul when it takes up a budget plan next week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Tuesday.

"I expect to see one way or other the product coming out of the House to speak to that and to preclude any funding to be used for that," Cantor said at a news conference, referring to an effort to block implementation of the health-care law.

House Republicans aim to pass a spending measure next week that would immediately cut at least $32 billion from the government's $3.7 trillion budget in an effort to trim record budget deficits.

Republican lawmakers are expected to unveil details of the spending-cut package on Thursday ahead of a wide-ranging debate on the House floor next week.

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Three prong effort to repeal ObamaCare: Repeal, Courts,Funding

Even as the pressure intensifies on him to consider a 2012 bid, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush indicated that he's not reconsidering his decision to not run for president.

"Yes," Bush wrote in an email when asked if the door remained firmly shut on a White House campaign next year.

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Unhappy with the presidential field as it appears now and increasingly nervous about finding a candidate who can unite the party and beat Pres. Obama, high-profile conservatives have begun going public with their pleas for the Floridian to run.

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And, no it should be

While this would be slightly less bad than ObamaCare, it's important to realize that it still wouldn't do much to alleviate the significant problems with the law that Daniels' outlines at the start of the piece. Nearly all of the spending in the national health care law comes from expanding Medicaid and offering subsidies to individuals to purchase insurance on these government-run exchanges, and this wouldn't change that. And while getting rid of benefit mandates would provide individuals with more choice in the exchanges, it would still be hard to contain the growth of premiums as long as there's a requirement that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions. Furthermore, given the raft of new regulations introduced by the law, you aren't going to get anything close to aproximating a consumer-driven system. What this article really does is reinforce why repealing the law is so crucial.

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The best course of action is to repeal ObamaCare