Ben Nelson headed for ER — extended retirement?
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Ben Nelson’s political road just got a lot steeper.
This assumes he will seek re-election in 2012, a move this writer sees as unlikely.
Nelson is far too clever to have cast the decisive 60th vote for an unpopular Obama health care plan to really believe his political future in Nebraska is anything but a crapshoot, if not a dead end.
Three years is a long time forward to guess what a politician might do. But nothing in the current climate augurs well for a Democrat who needs a lot of Republican and Independent votes in a conservative state.
He might wind up as an ambassador to somewhere or a cabinet something or other, if Obama’s sagging fortune’s reverse. But as the senior senator from Nebraska, our bet is – never.
Nelson, a former two-term governor who is in his second term in the U.S. Senate, has lived politically off the charity of others – Republicans. In the latest count at our Wednesday deadline, the Nebraska secretary of state’s office reported 542,752 registered Republicans; 384,338 registered Democrats.
There was a Gallup poll of some 1,800 registered voters this past July showing a Democrat edge in percentages, 43-42. But that was probably the 2009 high watermark of Obama infatuation in the Cornhusker State and around the nation.
As a senator, one of Nelson’s signature ploys has been a version of John Kerry’s famed dodge mentioned in the 2004 presidential election.
Kerry gained a line in the politician’s handbook of craftiness by proclaiming about one of his political hedges, “I voted for it before I voted against it.”
Nelson’s amendment to that evasion turned on his vote to keep Senate consideration on ObamaCare alive, centered on concerns over abortion language and other matters. Had his concern been as fervent as that of most Americans (2 to 1 against), he could have driven a stake into ObamaCare, probably forever.
Hiding behind procedural votes has always been the stuff of Nelson-like politicians.
Nelson has until now had a big break in that Nebraska’s major molder of political opinion, the Omaha World-Herald, has never taken him to the woodshed over procedural shiftiness. But everything changed with ObamaCare, and the publisher’s opinion column has roughed up Nelson at least three times recently, explaining thoroughly to readers how the procedural vote gambit works.
Effective full page paid advertisements run by ObamaCare opponents have added to the public’s insights.
The Wall Street Journal weighed in on Tuesday with the observation that the American people have been watching closely.
“They have learned a great deal about filibusters, manager’s amendments, reconciliations, special Medicaid sweeteners for special states, etc,” the newspaper said.
Nelson got one of those “sweeteners” – some would say “bribes” – to give Nebraska an exceptional all-time leg up on Medicaid costs. That one is teed-up for Saturday Night Live as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” It joins a growing list along with the “Second Louisiana Purchase” – Obama’s $300 million payoff for Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s vote for ObamaCare.
So exotic did these bribes become that another Nelson – Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida – got targeted health law favoritism for three counties in his state. Naturally enough, they were the three most populous counties with the greatest Democrat voter turnout.
Informed or not, Americans can easily figure it out that giveaways for one state demand giveways for all, which simply leverage up expenses for health care totals.
This newspaper has whacked away on Ben Nelson, since his day as governor in the 1990s when his appointments led to every judge on the Nebraska Supreme Court being a registered Democrat – like there wasn’t one qualified Republican in a state that at the time had twice as many registered members of the GOP as Democrat ones. His cunning with procedural votes in the Senate could be a Harvard case study.
Some memories might fade by 2012, but the trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ obligations for do-nothing stimulus bills, deficit spending and the unnecessary ObamaCare entitlements won’t.
What is going to stick most with Nelson, this writer predicts, was his willingness and/or eagerness to stand with a seedy administration so inclined in every way to bend the Constitution of the United States for political ends.
December 25, 2009
