Yesterday, on a 47-51 party line vote – with Senators Lieberman (CT) and Warner (VA) not voting – Senate Republicans followed their House colleagues in coming through with their promise to get a vote on repealing Obamacare.

Despite the rhetoric of the left, the vote was far more than symbolic as it forced some key vulnerable Democrats, including Claire McCaskill (MO) and Ben Nelson (NE) to show whether they stood with the citizens of their states or with the arm-twisting of Harry Reid and Barack Obama.  In a vote in August, 71% of those Missourians who cast ballots voted to prohibit the government from requiring that a person purchase health insurance, the lynchpin of Obamacare’s takeover of the American health insurance system. McCaskill gave those 71% of voters the finger and, I predict, sealed her fate in the 2012 elections, as did Ben Nelson whose state is 2–to-1 against Obamacare.

“Conservative” Democrat Joe Manchin (WV) also voted with the Democrats to preserve Obamacare, proving right his Republican challenger in the 2010 Senate race who said that Manchin’s late-in-the-race conversion to being against Obamacare was a lie and that his earlier support of Obamacare represented who Manchin really is.  A Rasmussen Reports poll of West Virginia likely voters in August, 2010 showed 69% of the state opposed to Obamacare, with 80% of those “strongly opposed” and almost twice as many supporting the state suing to block the law’s health insurance mandate as opposing such a lawsuit.  &%^$! the people, says Manchin!

Please read the rest of my article at the web site of the American Spectator:
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/02/04/repeal-appeal