The right and wrong way to talk about Gardasil; Update: A really, really stupid attack on Palin
A month ago, I was “fringe” for spotlighting Rick Perry’s Gardasil problem.
As I said then, it’s not just a “single-issue,” one-off problem. It’s about his instincts, judgment, non-apology apology, and ethics.
For everyone still catching up, here’s my column from a month ago.
Now, Gardasil is the search word of the day. And there’s a new development.
After successfully highlighting Perry’s troubling abuse of executive power during last night’s debate, Michele Bachmann risks blowing it with some factually inaccurate assertions.
She’s RIGHT on the principles, wrong on some of the details.
She needs to stay on message and stick with the facts.
The Texas state legislature repealed the order (over Perry’s hysterical objections) before any girl was forcibly vaccinated.
And while individual stories of Gardasil harm may or may not be true (Bachmann cited a mother who thinks the vaccine caused mental retardation in her child while making the post-debate rounds), it’s not the primary case she should be making.
Again: Bachmann is RIGHT on the principles, but it gets dicey citing cases where individual anecdotes need to be vetted before tossing them out on TV. She came dangerously close to using the same demagogic tactics Perry employed in obstinately defending the order even after it was repealed. Reminder:
Trampling the deliberative process. Since Day One, President Obama has short-circuited transparency, public debate and congressional oversight. How can Perry effectively challenge the White House’s czar fetish, stealth recess appointments, selective waiver-mania and backdoor legislating through administrative orders when Perry himself employed the very same process as governor?
Not only did Perry defend going above the heads of elected state legislators, but his office also falsely claimed the legislature had no right to repeal the executive order. “The order is effective until Perry or a successor changes it, and the Legislature has no authority to repeal it,” Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody told The Washington Post in February 2007.
When both the House and Senate repealed the law six weeks later, Perry did not — as he now claims — listen humbly or “agree with their decision.”
Human shield demagoguery. In response to the legislature’s rebuke, the infuriated governor attacked those who supported repeal as “shameful” spreaders of “misinformation” who were putting “women’s lives” at risk. Borrowing a tried-and-true Alinskyite page from the progressive left, Perry surrounded himself with female cervical cancer victims and deflected criticism of his imperial tactics with emotional anecdotes.
He then lionized himself and the minority of politicians who voted against repeal of his Gardasil order. “They will never have to think twice about whether they did the right thing. No lost lives will occupy the confines of their conscience, sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.” Perry, of course, has now put his own ghastly Gardasil order on that same altar — but with no apology to all those he demonized and exploited along the way.
The point is that Perry rushed to mandate the Merck-pushed order less than 8 months after it had received FDA approval. Clinical trial and safety data was extremely limited at the time. And scientific assessments are still coming in about the long-term and synergistic effects of this and other vaccines.
The Merck push is still ongoing in other states, as I’ve reported. California is pushing forward with legislation making it possible to dispense the shots through the state to children as young as 12 without the permission of their parents.
If Obama sponsored a Gardasil mandate law, took Merck money and had a staffer-turned-Merck lobbyist, it would be an issue.
Hillary Clinton lobbied for Gardasil while Merck sat on hubby’s Global Initiative board. Conservatives cared back then. Pay-for-play still matters, especially when our children are involved.
There IS a middle ground between “absolutist anti-vaccine hysteria” and mindless, unquestioning support of Nanny State.
I am not an Jenny McCarthy-esque loon for taking the time to assess the massive shot schedule & deciding what’s right for my kids and when.
It’s not “freaking out” to highlight parental sovereignty issues. And this is not merely a “social” issue instead of an economic issue. It’s both. The debate over Obamacare is in large part a debate over the limits of government in private health decisions. This is of a piece.
***
Update:
Former Hot Air alum and former Texas state GOP communications director Bryan Preston, now at Pajamas Media, notes that during the tenure of Sarah Palin (who rightly criticized the appearance of crony capitalism in the Perry/Gardasil debacle last night), Alaska took federal funds to expand access to Gardasil:
( Juneau, Alaska) ─ The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services announced today that an increase in federal funding will make it possible for all Alaska girls ages 9 through 18 to receive Gardasil ®, the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, at no cost.
Preston writes:
This isn’t quite the same thing as mandating (and being overturned on, so it didn’t actually happen) a vaccination, but taking federal funds for Gardasil doesn’t quite square with Palin’s hot shots at Perry on Fox last night. I admire Sarah Palin quite a bit (and Bachmann too), but aligning herself with Bachmann’s precious bodily fluids gambit is a huge mistake on her part. Both of them are flaming their own credibility over an issue that, in the grand view of things, ought not to matter much. It hasn’t mattered much to some of the most conservative voters in America, over three gubernatorial elections running now. Both Palin and Bachmann are coming off as ill informed, unreasonable and desperate.
It “isn’t quite the same thing as mandating.”
Gee, no. Ya think?
It’s a freakingly obvious night and day difference — Perry’s MANDATE on families and the MANDATE on insurers going over the heads of the state legislature versus the Palin administration’s decision to accept federal subsidies to increase access to those who choose to take it. (Note: Gardasil is not and never has been mandated in the state of Alaska.)
Preston also objects to indirect costs imposed by the Palin administration’s program on taxpayers outside the state.
Newsflash: The Perry executive order would have ordered Texas health officials to use federal Medicaid funding to cover the vaccine for young women — a cost that would have been borne by millions of taxpayers outside Texas.
As for the gobsmackingly ridiculous claim that this revelation about Palin makes her guilty of the crony capitalism Perry is marinated in, another flashback:
Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., responding to pressure from parents, pro-family organizations, and medical groups, announced on February 20 that it was immediately suspending its lobbying campaign to persuade state legislatures to mandate that adolescent girls receive the company’s vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cervical cancer as a requirement for school attendance.
A February 2 executive order by Texas Governor Rick Perry that made Texas the first state to require that schoolgirls as young as 11 get vaccinated with a three-dose regimen of Merck’s Gardasil before entering sixth grade had provoked a storm of outrage from pro-family groups.
A January 31 AP report that tied Merck & Co. to Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country, added fuel to the fire by revealing a blatant conflict of interest. The report observed that a top official from Merck’s vaccine division sits on Women in Government’s business council, and members of Women in Government have introduced many of the bills around the country that would mandate compulsory Gardasil vaccinations. Merck had also admitted donating an undisclosed amount of money to lobbyists promoting such legislation.
A follow-up report by AP’s Liz Austin Peterson on February 21 noted that Governor Perry’s chief of staff, Deirdre Delisi, met with Perry’s budget director and three members of his office for an “HPV Vaccine for Children Briefing” on October 16, the same day that Merck’s political action committee donated $5,000 to Perry’s campaign.
A spokesman for the governor, Robert Black, described the timing of the meeting and the Merck donation as a coincidence, but Cathie Adams, president of the Texas Eagle Forum, remains skeptical. “We have too many coincidences,” said Adams. “I think that the voters of Texas would find that very hard to swallow.”
Now, read this from the National Institute for Money in State Politics:
Among gubernatorial candidates who received contributions from Merck, Perry was second only to former California Gov. Gray Davis, who received $28,000.
Since the 2000 election cycle, the drug company has contributed $2.46 million to state-level candidates and party committees, doling their money out almost equally to both parties.
Democratic committees received just over $1 million and Republicans $1.4 million. Individuals employed by Merck gave an additional $2.5 million to state-level politics. Merck has helped finance races in forty states since the 2000 election cycle, when the Institute began collecting contribution data in all 50 states. Merck has focused intently on its home base, New Jersey, as well as giving in Florida, California and Pennsylvania. Combined, these four states have received more than $1 million from Merck, or 44 percent of the company’s total
contributions.
…At $360 for the three-shot Gardisal regimen, Merck could generate billions in sales if it is successful in its efforts to persuade the states to require the use of the vaccine.
MERCK CONTRIBUTIONS TO STATE POLITICS, 2000-2006
CYCLE TOTAL
2000 $550,894
2002 $764,126
2004 $641,082
2006* $504,250
TOTAL $2,460,352
* 2006 data collection is ongoing; totals may increase.
MERCK CONTRIBUTIONS BY STATE, 2000-2006*
STATE AMOUNT
New Jersey $317,600
Florida $256,000
California $251,439
Pennsylvania $249,775
Texas $158,143
Virginia $135,750
New York $118,025
Illinois $96,925
Ohio $93,570
Georgia $85,807
Missouri $57,500
West Virginia $52,250
North Carolina $48,000
Washington $47,850
Kansas $47,753
Arkansas $44,390
Louisiana $40,450
Kentucky $40,225
Alabama $36,000
Mississippi $31,700
New Mexico $31,300
Nevada $27,750
Oregon $27,500
Oklahoma $25,600
South Carolina $24,150
Utah $21,250
Indiana $17,000
Idaho $16,150
Maryland $13,650
Iowa $8,550
South Dakota $8,200
Colorado $8,100
Connecticut $7,250
Vermont $6,100
North Dakota $3,250
Nebraska $2,550
Delaware $1,350
New Hampshire $800
Maine $600
Montana $100
TOTAL $2,460,352
Note: Alaska does not appear on this list. It was never a lobbying target for Merck. Nor did Palin have an ex-chief of staff lobbying for Merck or a staffer’s mother-in-law serving as a state director of an advocacy group bankrolled by Merck to push legislatures across the country to put forward bills mandating the Gardasil vaccine for preteen girls.
Moreover, Palin is on record in 2008 e-mails expressing her general opposition to certain vaccine mandates.
It’s a pathetic and ill-informed act of desperation to try and turn the crony capitalism charge on Palin, which is a telling measure of how effective her voice is on this topic — and why so many would rather silence her.
***
The glibness with which Perry defenders dismiss the obstacles to opting out is disturbing.
A Time for Choosing provides a must-read reality check from the right-leaning Association of American Physicians and Surgeons:
For many families currently, the exemption isn’t worth the piece of paper it is printed on. Besides the simple fact that parents should not have to get permission from the state to make informed consent medical decisions for their own children, here are four reasons why “opting-out” of state mandated vaccines doesn’t work for many families in Texas:
“Opt-out” or Conscientious Exemption to Vaccination Process is a Bureaucratic Nightmare
To get the exemption form, parents must first submit a written form to State Health Department in Austin which forces the disclosure of the child’s full name, birthdate, and mailing address. The Health Department takes those written requests and creates yet another form on which they print the child’s same personal information that the parent had to send to health department, and the Health Department sometimes takes weeks to mail out these forms inevitably disrupting the child’s school attendance. The Health Department only sends the forms by U.S. mail, and once the parent receives the forms, they must be notarized within 90 days of submitting them and then repeatedly resubmitted every 2 years even though there is no expiration set in statute.
[1] Because the Health Department further eroded parental rights by publishing more rules getting rid of provisional enrolment for exemptions, (families used to have 30 days at the beginning of school to get their paperwork in), now schools participate in aggressive misleading education campaigns touting “no shots – no school” while not informing families of the exemption or the instructions how to obtain it.
Private Schools Deny Admission
The Texas attorney general issued an opinion in April of 2006, ga0420, that states that private schools do not have to accept the conscience exemption to vaccination in Texas Law[2], and many private schools do not. For example, the Dallas Diocese for Catholic Schools policy number 5024 states, “Schools will comply with immunization requirements established by the Texas Catholic Conference Education Department. Conscientious objections/waivers are not accepted in schools of the Diocese.” [3] Every new vaccine mandate causes more children with valid legal exemptions to be denied their private school education.
Doctors Refuse Medical Care
Even though you may be able to get a piece of paper from the state health department affirming your right to refuse state mandated vaccines for your child, just try and find a doctor who will honor it! According to a recent study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 39% of pediatricians surveyed said they would throw kids out of practices who are not vaccinated. [4] PROVE has documented this rampant problem of doctors dismissing families utilizing a vaccine exemption in Texas to the legislature in previous sessions. Please review our report entitled “The Erosion of Public Trust & Informed Consent through Immunization Harassment, Discrimination and Coercion” prepared for the House Public Health Committee in 2005. [5]
Insurance Rates Rise and Accessibility Affected
Responsible parents who have secured health care coverage for their children will be forced to pay higher insurance rates whether they want the HPV vaccine or not. Even if you “opt-out” of the HPV vaccine mandate for Gardasil by Merck by securing a conscientious exemption waiver, there is no way for Texas parents to “opt-out” of the corresponding rise in their insurance premiums. § 1367.053. (a)
(2) of the Insurance Code REQUIRES that any vaccine required be law must be covered by insurance. [6] This first-dollar coverage requirement results in corresponding direct hiking of insurance premiums to meet costs, and for a vaccine as expensive as this one, an HPV vaccine mandate risks putting premiums for basic health care coverage out of reach financially for even more Texas families. Additionally, we have received complaints from families where insurance companies are harassing parents with letters and discriminating on coverage based on whether or not the child has had all their state mandated vaccines.
***
As a sidenote, Perry lowballed the amount of money he took from Merck. See here.
And a final point: A friend points out that Perry supporters sabotage their own defense of Perry. If Perry was simply “erring on the side of life” and would simply have pursued the policy of increasing access to Gardasil in a different way, then he most certainly would have no objection to what happened in Alaska — e.g., making the vaccine available to people who wanted it without mandating it by acccepting existing federal dollars.
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Exactly!! How dare Texas have no state taxes and lure unsuspecting companies and individuals (Glen Beck) to its lair. Once Texas snags you, you can never leave!
I admit, I AM surrounded by comfort and ease. I am a very fortunate person who is living in middle class comfort, due to the hard work of my husband and myself in the workforce for 40+ years. So, you nailed it there, my friend.
I do think however, that you misunderstand me and my point. I love Palin and would vote for her! It is the superficial majority of independents I am concerned about. Because, YES…Sarah Palin has a grating voice.
By the way I did NOT pick McCain. The MSM did. I loathed him as a candidate from the start. I DO have a good feel for who is electable and who isn’t.
Thanks for the lecture, but I don’t need it Please…DO NOT try to judge me and my concern about the plight of my neighbors or my need to “fake” that concern. Who the h are you anyway? I have had plenty of hardships and trials in my 68 years of life. And you don’t know me well enough to speak to me that way.
Sorry, Happy, I was wrong there.
I love how even though Michelle used to work closely with Bryan, and even stared in some HotAir “Vent” videos with him back in the day, she doesn’t let that get in the way of giving Preston the spanking he deserves here…
I wonder if we’ll be seeing any form of retraction and/or apology from Preston any time soon. Probably not, but Michelle clearly doesn’t participate in “crony journalism”… she gives spankings where spankings are due, even if it means spanking a formerly close associate.
Kudos to you, Michelle!
He’s a crook not just because of his “pay for play” politics that Michelle is describing here but because he is even worse on the score of sweetheart real estate deals than BJ Clinton and Teh Won combined. But “nobody’s perfect”. The wacky, wacky world of noseholders. Oxygen deprivation to the brain.
BTW, if Rush has many more off days like his declaring that Bachmann “jumped the shark” today, I think it will be safe to say that he too is bought and paid for by the GOP establishment. Yeah, Bachmann jumped the shark for pointing out that Perrybush is a crony capitalist and big government dictator so Perrybush wins. Someone really flunked ethics 101.
Great coverage Michelle. I like Bryan and still read his columns but as you pointed out, he is off-base on this one. His Texas roots are showing.
Run Sarah Run!
On September 13th, 2011 at 3:13 pm, happyscrapper said:
You hit the nail on the head but I think you understated the problem. The whiny, screechy voice and odd inflection is accompanied by convoluted sentences,poor syntax, dangling participles, misplaced modifiers, and mispronunciation of words i.e. the crooked “dills” of others.Her written tweets are concise and on point. She would benefit from a good speech coach and maybe a teleprompter. All the great ideas in the world are useless if they can’t be articulated and communicated to others in a persuasive and inspiring manner.I have trouble understanding her speech also.
I was not impressed at all with Perry. In fact the man is creepy. If you ask me about the only way to see Obama win in 2012 is for the GOP to nominate Perry. I would even prefer Romney. I am sure the Democrats are thrilled having Perry go after Social Security, thus costing senior votes, rather than attacking ObamaCare. And Perry on immigration is worse than Mc Cain.
I refuse to vote for Perry.
From my read of the tea leaves the Establishment was concerned with Romney’s shallow support and with no other Establishment candidate they had to find someone quick that the Tea Party/Conservative base would coalesce behind and Perry was their man.
For me it all comes down to who do I want to nominate the next Supreme Court justice. Certainly not BHO.
Big concern of mine too but do you think he could ever get amnesty through the House?
The people who want Perry refuse to look at his crony capitalism,his sugsr daddy role for ilegals, his quasi-fascist mandate record, and his attittude towards those that dissent agisnt him-even when they are in the majority.
Perry may be ‘electable’, but at what price? Given his similarities to Bush I and Bush II as a mix of the two, what we will end up with is either a one-term or two-term President, with a grateful Democrat Party waiting in the wings.
If no one else gets in for me to look at, I would have to go with Bachmann or Cain.
There is nothing wrong with providing a vaccine that reduce or eliminate the risk of cancer. A man might have several sex partners when he could obtain the HPV virus then settle down by attending church and marrying a woman. That woman may be a virgin at the time of her marriage and remain faithful to her husband her entire life, but she would still be exposed to HPV therefore she would have a risk of developing cancer. If she had the HPV vaccine she would reduce her risk of developing cancer by 99%.
This is no different then getting a flu shot or any other vaccine to protect against a disease. STD’s are not a punishment from G-d for having sex.
Pasadena Phil, I would venture that a LOT of so-called ‘conservative’ pundits will have double-talking moments like Rush Limabugh has had over the years, becasue the first and foremeost thing on their minds is making money; these particular ‘conservative’ pundits have no life outside of their show and thus, for ratings, they must placate the GOP elite from time to time, even if doing so looks stupid to outsiders.
(Think of Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham urging us to support Boehnor’s non-negotiated continuing resolution and debt ceiling positions, for example.)
Someone like Michelle Malkin is a journalist and independent businesswoman first, and an entertainer, a distant second. Thus she is not as beholden to the GOP as Rush et al are, in my analysis.
Pasedena Phil
I’ll have to see that. Dick Morris is on Hannity frequently and he usually has some good insights. He’s also an opportunist and is marketing himself across the TEA PARTY audience well.
After reading many of the comments here on this topic, I am convinced that we need a different kind of vaccine: one for politicians to inoculate them against cronyism and corruption, fraud and deceit. It would be administered upon their entry into politics at ANY level.
I’ve read MM’s posts on this topic and appreciate her thorough research and investigative work. She is honest and trustworthy in my view. The amount of money Perry may have accepted in campaign donations (for all we know, the initial $5,000 may have just been a down payment) may be part of a much larger issue of judgement and character traits that we need to be aware of as MM has alluded to.
Let me say this again. Gardasil doesn’t prevent cervical cancer. It is believed to reduce the infection rate of a few viruses which are part of a group believed to cause cancer. Not everyone who contracts the virus will get cancer or continue to be infected. It is different from a flu shot or any other vaccine to prevent disease. Viruses belong to different groups because of their characteristics. The vaccines produced to fight them are different as well. Some vaccines use live deactivated viruses and others use completely dead viruses. The flu vaccine produced each year is a combined as the best GUESS of what will be circulating in the fall. If the guess is wrong, oh well. What the public doesn’t know about vaccines and disease would fill volumes. Just because an individual receives a vaccine is no guarantee that immunity is acquired either.
That’s why I comment here. At least we start off discussing facts before so many threads deteriorate into RINO support group therapy.
Apology accepted. We are on the same side, and it is nice to see that conservatives, unlike regressives, actually are willing to admit when they are wrong!
Phil…I don’t think Rush was talking about what she said during the debate. I believe he was talking about what she was saying AFTER the debate, accusing the vaccine of causing mental retardation without any proof, but just because one person said so. Rush is a true conservative and is definitely NOT in the pocket of the GOP, and anyone who thinks so just doesn’t know him very well! He answers to NO ONE and makes up his own mind. The man is a self-described “guru”, “maharishi” and is 99.7% right. Don’t you know that? Geez…picking on el Rushbo is a losing fight.
THAT’S what I was trying to say!! Good on you.
Lobbyists, bribes, contributions, whatever.
Reminds me of the old joke:
Guy in a bar goes up to a beautiful girl and says, “If I give you a million dollars will you sleep with me?”
She bats her eyes and says, “Sure!”
Then the guy says, “If I give you five dollars will you sleep with me?”
She slaps him and says, “What do you think I am, a whore?”
Then the guy says, “We’ve already established that. Now I’m just trying to settle on a price.”
Phil, you crack me up!
He was completely in the back pocket of GW Bush and despite declaring he was through carrying the water for the GOP, he finally endorsed McCain.
When it comes to actually standing on principle over party, Rush eventually caves every time. Not as bad as Hannity but it’s just a question of caving early or later.
Rush is a realist. I believe he endorsed McCain after he became our nominee because the alternative was unthinkable. I’m sure you will correct me if I’m wrong.
I could only bring myself to channel surf through the debate last night. I tried to catch Herman Cain speaking and did several times. He is a breath of fresh air. I watched the two alpha males Romney and Perry assume the position. It was like watching two high school jocks showing off. I couldn’t believe the smirks and eye-rolls from Perry when Romney spoke. I agree about Bachmann’s bad move in quoting the woman about the vaccine without checking facts.
I love Herman Cain. The rest are a disappointment. And that is dead on that the media would never in a million years give Cain the attention he deserves because he is a black conservative.
McCain took contributions from Merck also.
Wasn’t Sarah Palin associated with McCain in some way??
It was a flu shot given to my father without his permission at a VA hospital that killed him. Sorry, I don’t want the government telling me what shots I must have.
Yep, and they lost my respect.
We are tearing ourselves apart. Rick Perry didn’t ruin an economy. Rick Perry didn’t destroy health care. Rick Perry didn’t sell out his allies to the Muslim Brotherhood. We are watching the intentional destruction of our country before our eyes, and here we are discussing an executive order from a governor that never became law. I have been on the Malkin band wagon a long time, but for the life of me, I don’t get it. I don’t understand the heat from these posts about Perry, and most importantly, I don’t get the relevance.
Perry has an outstanding record over a long period of time. If he’s not good enough, Reagan wasn’t either. Go back and look at Reagan’s time as governor, and he wouldn’t have passed your litmus test, either.
The difference between Perry and Reagan is, Reagan, very obviously, “Got it”. Perry still appears clueless.
Perry didn’t say, “I wouldn’t do it again”. He said, “I wouldn’t do it that way.” He still approves of forcing parents to give their children a vaccination, while allowing a bureaucraticallly intensive “opt out”. When, it should be that the vaccine is available and anyone who wants it can “opt-in”.
It belies an authoritarian mindset that Reagan didn’t have.
When you combine that with his stand on illegal aliens, and his dhimmist cooperation with Islam, it becomes clear that Perry has more the mindset of the socialists than of the individualists.
I look into those piggy eyes, and I see a corruptocrat.
Off topic a bit, but nevertheless…
Has anyone followed up on those “incidents” on airlines on September 11?
The implication in Malkin’s post surely was that those dastardly Muslims were at it again and that was why the “mainstream media” were not reporting the names of the perpetrators, which surely started with “Mohammed”?
Turns out it was mostly hysterical reactions to dark-skinned people caught in the act of traveling on airplanes on 9/11.
Updates? Haven’t seen any.
Carry on.
You confirmed my point. In the end, Rush is a “Republican Uber Alles” Republican. All roads lead to bigger and bigger government with him too because in the end, he always votes for the LOTE.
There is a big difference between being a movement conservative versus being a whiner. If voting Republican is ALWAYS the solution, people like Rush are just whiners. They will always hold their noses before sticking their fingers in the light socket yet again despite having been shocked every time they did so before.
You don’t get it, Happy. The only way he could have won Phil’s approval would have been to endorse Obama.
Many of us are fed up with the lesser of two evils argument. We can do better than Obama AND Perry.
And so the Texas Kumbaya Chorus is off and running again. Everyone hold your noses!
Yes, good list – I know what you mean. With TARP, Prescription Drugs, and Dubai Ports, it’s a good thing Perry’s not a RINO to do such things as you mention!
Oh, wait. . . .
And now Redstate is using the very same tactic to smear Bachmann. In fact, it’s even worse because being a US congressman means Bachmann worked in DC which is not where one fights Minnesota state laws. Of course, if you have whored yourself out to Perrybush as Redstate has done, facts and logic are irrelevant.
The RINO logic is to run someone almost imperceptibly to the right of the Democrat. The further left the Dems drift, so do the Assistant Dems. That is why the electorate is described “right of center” which is wrong. We are the center by definition. It is the government that is way left of center.
So long as people keep voting LOTE, they are voting to support everything they keep whining against. They talk tough with “stocking up on ammo” etc.. but in the end, they can’t simply vote for a
3rd2nd party candidate. There’s GOT to be an official psychological disorder defined for this condition.It’s funny to see somebody who helped elect Boxer, Moonbeam and Obama calling anybody else an “assistant Democrat”.
How about Learned Helplessness?
It looks like Bachmann has doubled down on her (putting it diplomatically) questionable claims about the drug. Not to defend Perry at all, but this points to a really disturbing trend with Bachmann regarding her grasp of facts. Nominate her as the GOP candidate, and you might as well say hello to 4 more years of Obama, because the media will exploit this tendency of hers like hell.
The issue of Gardisal is something that could be of interest only to people who have an erogenous response to reading the Code of Federal Regulations. In the real world, we understand that the most important issue is tort reform. Medical insurance and the price of medications and the cost of the doctor’s visit are all directly caused by the lack of tort reform and that affects every American. The costs of goods and services are directly caused by the lack of tort reform. Europe, Australia and Israel have had tort reform for years. They understand that businesses will not locate where a locust of trial lawyers, feasting on every slip and fall on a banana peel at your local Ralph’s Supermarket, runs roughshod over business and individuals. The trial lawyers cause a redistribution of income, the likes of which Barack Obama and John Edwards combined could not have envisioned. Gardisal may be a cutting edge issue to some policy wonks buried in the library at some beltway think tank but let’s get real. It is not an important issue. Tort reform is.
Yeah, Phil I noticed that redstate thing too.
HPV should not be classified as the same danger to the public as Polio, Hep A and Hep B. The reason why the Hep B was added to the list of inoculations was to reduce the carrier state because too many people infected by the virus didn’t clear the virus from their bodies and could pass the virus onto others who might die quickly from Hep B infections. Hep B causes liver damage. The argument in favor of Gardasil seems to be more about what might be prevented rather than what actually will be prevented. We don’t know how effective the vaccine really is.
So now the conservative position is we are against all State mandated immunizations. Even if they have an opt-out. Michelle Bachmann’s state doesn’t have an opt-out in regards to the HPV vaccine. She served 5 years in the Minnesota Congress, and never brought this issue up once. Never brought up until she wanted to slam Perry with it. So, I guess she was for mental retardation before she was against it.
Way to set up a false strawman Steve. Please think a little more than that – you’re using the left’s tactics. (I hope Perry supporters don’t use the left’s tactics. . . that would be a bad omen.)
What bothers me most is this Gardasil moment of Perry’s. It’s an illustration of Nanny state politics. Immigration is another problem. politicians are going to have to put enforcing the law over their need for (hopeful)votes they never get. Sarah is my pick….Go Sarah!
A side note- all you Rush haters make me sick. It’s bad enough i have one of my former favorites ( Malkin) bashing in the brains of the man that will rout Obama, but for you ingrates to pound Rush is just sickening. Yes, I use the word ingrate.I guess you weren’t around when Rush bashed Bush over Medicare part D, immigration, or the Dubai Port deal.
Perhaps you weren’t around in 1989. You don’t remember when there was one person in this country where conservatives could go to hear the truth. Rush has paid a huge price to tell us the truth over the years. He has been attacked like no other person, and has taken every slam, every threat, every arrow with grace and dignity. He has been booed off several stages by liberal protestors. He was fired from ESPN for telling the truth about McNabb. He has been called every name in the book, so your attacks on Rush aren’t going to bother him. But they damn sure bother me. Ingrate.
I think that’s really the point of this. The similarity of Perry’s EO mandating Gardasil, and Obama’s cronyism, czars, and corruption. I know we have some regular contributors who have generally supported Perry with several caveats (like immigration, or even this issue) but there is a contingent of Perry supporters who seem to have parachuted in just for this issue, and their arguments are largely indistinguishable from DailyKOS (well, maybe less profanity-laced). They are fine with everything as long as the politician has the correct letter in parentheses after his name.
I haven’t attacked Rush, but no one ought to be completely above criticism. That would make them Obama (as he sees himself, anyway).
A great big DITTO, Steve!! I do not understand any bashing of Rush. He is the truest, most honest, tell-it-like-it-is conservative I have ever had the honor to listen to. Of course he is not above criticism, and once in a while I disagree with him (seldom). However, he has a right to his opinion without being bashed by his own conservative people! Save your bashing for the enemy!! They are the ones we are fighting.
Or to put it another way…Rush can take it. But Scrapper can’t!! And you won’t like me when I’m defending Rush.
We as conservatives are in terrible danger. Many of the comments on here are simply ridiculous. You guys are the reason the left media has been able to pick our candidate in previous elections. You jump on and destroy everyone that is not “pure” and they are then staked out as extreme against some milquetoast like McCain. MM is now helping that play out all over again.
All the candidates need to stick to their own ideas and plans and stop bashing each other. It is a waste of time and plays right into the left’s hands.
Not to defend Bachmann (see #142), but there is a very important difference between mandating vaccines against infectious diseases that a person can contract through unwitting casual contact, and mandating vaccines against diseases that can only be contracted through deliberate behavior. The level of urgency just isn’t the same in both cases.
So the conservative position is (or, I would think, ought to be) that the state should never forcibly override a person’s, or a family’s, decision on vaccination except when there’s a very strong, urgent public safety reason to do so.
I express immense gratitude to Michelle Malkin for her honesty, dedication, and drive–she is vetting these candidates. She is doing solid journalism on a daily basis, using her intellect, wisdom, wit, and moral integrity…and her love for the United States of America and its Constitution.
As I read Michelle’s facts and comments on the past and present activities, and lives, of the candidates, I am able to see which candidates I can trust. Don’t we all want a leader we can trust–a leader who is a person of honesty and integrity? Someone who does not act based on favors and money and polls?
This being said, it is time for us all to pay a lot more attention to Herman Cain. I can, and do trust this fine man.