“Mike will fight to improve the bill and if the Stupak amendment is left intact he will vote no,” his spokeswoman, Alison Mills, said in a statement.WHAT!?
Um...there appears to be a disconnect in the Capuano campaign, because Mills must have been sending that statement to Viser around the same time I was posting excerpts from the press release that stated:
“When the final bill comes out of the House-Senate conference committee, every member will follow their conscience and cast their vote based on the pluses and minuses of the finished product. I'm proud that my vote helped keep health care reform with a public option alive, so that the fight for health care reform will go forward. I believe it's what the people of Massachusetts expect and what Ted Kennedy would have demanded."You might remember that quote, because I just posted it 40 minutes ago.
Now obviously it doesn't say he would vote in favor of a final bill that included Stupak, but it doesn't say he would vote against either. I think Camp Caps needs to get its ducks in a row.
14 comments:
Wow, epic, epic fail from Capuano, on three fronts:
1. Completely blowing his one chance to get into the race;
2. Executing the technically demanding triple flip-flop (voting against, then for, then against); and
3. Completely undercutting his own campaign.
I bet that manna from heaven tastes like a turd sandwich right about now...
I agree with the commenter above. This triple flip-flop is a major belly flop.
I think it's over for Caps.
A catastrophe of the highest order for the Capuano campaign.
You just can't make this stuff up. At least the press must be thrilled, it's certainly-interesting?
How is this hard to understand?
He voted AGAINST Stupak. It won. The House vote he took FOR the whole bill sent it to the Senate, where (hopefully) Stupak will be stripped out. If it is not stripped out, Capuano he may vote against it when it comes back to the House after conference. He is giving the legislative process the ability to work it out.
Coakley wouldn't have even sent it to the Senate, which would have killed the entire debate with no second bites at the apple.
Wonder what the other guys will say? Are they even in the picture on this? They could do what Caps did-put his finger in the air, figure out what direction the political winds are blowing and easy peasy snap, you've got your position for the day!
How hard is it to understand? I'll tell you- really hard when you now have a much higher hurdle in the Senate than you would have had you followed the advice of AG Coakley. Her attitude was- what's the hurray. If congress hadn't made this an emergency vote and if the transparency promised had actually been allowed perhaps a better negotiation, not to mention better bill, would have been put forward. Now the Senate has to find a way to go backwards. This Stupak amendment is breathtakingly regressive. I want my Senator to stand tall and have the courage of her convictions. Not just vote because the rest of the delegation did. Sad.
What's the hurry? The last time health care was in congress was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.
Why are we talking about abortion anyway? That's it for me. I'm voting for Scott Brown.
This is one of the biggest campaign blunders I can recall in recent memory. Capuano has literally taken his biggest advantage and destroyed it in one fell swoop. He already voted for this bill but will now vote against?? John Kerry got called a flip-flopper by Republicans spinning what he said, but there is no spinning this one. Absolutely astonishing.
It looks as though good old boy Mike has changed his mind. I guess he missed his period. Did he figure out that he was going to lose votes? He's the guy who says he stands for something. What? Changing his mind the next day? There's nothing like having the courage of one's convictions--he and the other munchkins in the race could learn something about that from Martha Coakley.
What convictions would those be? The unreasonable and poor judgment to risk killing health care reform at the first step because the bill is not perfect?
No thanks.
Ah, Coakley has a misunderstanding of this process. Coakley would have voted against this bill before it even got to the senate floor. The healthcare bill would have been dead and it would been another ten, twenty years before we ever got an opportunity like this again.
I think it's pretty apparent that Congressman Capuano is stating that IF the bill makes it to it's final stages and the abortion amendment is still attached, that he will vote against it.
Thing is, this bill still has to go through committee and there's no way that this amendment is gonna hold.
And we're talking about ABORTION because it was attached to the bill as an amendment.
Coakley pretty much proves here that she wants to jump on the issue before anyone else has a chance to voice an informed decision. She'd have killed the bill before it even made it through the House. Congressman Capuano understands the legislative process, that this bill still has to go through committee.
He knows the ideaologies of the people working on this and is confident that the Stupak amendment isn't going to make it to the final version of the bill. He's not going to KILL it just as it's gained momentum.
And good point above, the last time this issue was brought to the forefront was fifteen years ago. If Capuano had voted against this bill, it could have been ANOTHER fifteen years before we attempted a reform that is GREATLY needed.
Capuano showed classic hypocrisy when he was speaking out of both sides of his mouth on 2 of the most importan issues of the day--health care and abortion. He should be ashamed of himself and should taken to task for this by the media. He did the same thing on the death penalty issue--he is against it but he voted for it. As Lincoln said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
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