The post Goodbye, Vivek! appeared first on Noodle Pundit.
Surgeon General nominations shouldn’t be hard. In fact, it’s the easiest nominee for presidents to get confirmed. This should’ve been a slam dunk for the Obama administration. Instead, Obama’s own party revolted.
What’s the problem? Well, his nominee, Vivek Murthy, is an anti-gun advocate – and thinks firearms are a “healthcare issue.”
Via the Blaze:
The NRA letter also quotes a Murthy tweet from Oct. 16, 2012 that “guns are a health care issue.”
Investors Business Daily reported on Murthy’s anti-gun tweets, including, “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they’re scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue,” during the 2012 presidential elections, and in December 2012 in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre: “NRA press conference disappointing but predictable — blame everything in the world except guns for the Newtown tragedy. #wakeup.”
[...]
Even before Obama began advocating for more gun control laws in early 2013, Doctors for America touted itself in its “Docs vs. Glocks Campaign” in summer 2011 in Florida, gaining 200 signatures on a petition regarding including firearms ownership in medical information.
Sen. Harry Reid decided to nuke the Senate rules on filibusters for Obama’s nominees last year, which meant virtually all of the president’s non-Supreme Court nominees would be confirmed by a majority vote from Senate Democrats. Well, it’s come back to haunt them as red state Democrats can’t vote to confirm Murthy.
There’s no spin on this. You can’t blame a Republican filibuster for gridlock; you can’t cry racism. Democrats, it’s your own damn fault.
So, excuse me as I partake in a bit of schadenfreude over this deliciously entertaining foul up by Harry Reid.
Granted, the Surgeon General doesn’t craft policy, but this issue about firearms is over. Gun control is dead – and we don’t need more spawn from this debunked idea walking around Washington, D.C. So, yes, this is more of a symbolic destruction of a presidential nomination, but one that serves a point: quit it with nominating anti-gun nuts.
Yet, given that red state Democrats aren’t going to risk their necks to appease Obama, it once again proves how gun issues are a great way for conservatives to splinter, decimate, and humiliate liberals – and their nonsensical proposals – in full view of the public.
It’s a losing issue for them. It proved disastrous after they passed the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, which had a minimal impact on crime rates. It did usher in a Republican landslide later that year.
Six years later, Democrats felt they could try again on gun control with Al Gore. It proved fatal; Gore lost states ( West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee) he could’ve won to win the presidency – even with Bush winning Florida.
In fact, the assault weapons ban continues to be a cancer for Democrats (via Business Week):
3. The assault weapons ban continues to haunt the Democrats. In the wake of the December 2012 Newtown (Conn.) elementary school massacre, Obama and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California made reinstatement of the assault weapons ban their main gun control proposal. Murthy has been an outspoken proponent of the same approach. This has been a mistake, and it has made it easier for the NRA to block Murthy’s nomination.
Demonizing assault weapons—more precisely, military-style semiautomatic rifles—didn’t work in the 1990s. It has almost nothing to do with stopping ordinary street criminals who carry handguns. And it distracts from other, more sensible proposals, such as preventing felons and the mentally ill from having access to any firearms. Liberals reflexively condemn assault weapons as a symbolic flourish, when in fact such guns, absent their large ammunition magazines, are no more lethal than grandpa’s wooden-stock deer rifle. Moreover, no one—not the president, not Senator Feinstein, not Murthy—can plausibly suggest an actual ban, as in the prohibition of the millions of such rifles already in private hands. Such a proposal would require sheriffs in Texas and Idaho and the Dakotas going door-to-door to collect the gear—a prospect that would lead to a lot of sheriffs simply retiring or, worse, civil war.
And, while we’re on the subject about the mentally ill, Politico reported on this interesting development, which everyone knew was coming: the Navy Yard shooting was preventable.
Supervisors of the gunman who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last year noticed his erratic behavior well before the shooting but did not reveal any problems to the government, a Navy investigation has found.
“Had this information been reported, properly adjudicated and acted upon, [Aaron] Alexis’s authorization to access secure facilities and information would have been revoked,” the report said — and the shooting might have been prevented.
As it’s always been in the recent shootings across the country, America has a problem reporting , documenting, and helping the mentally ill.
Now, while Business Week also did gave points as to why Murthy should’ve been confirmed, the fact that he’s more focused on the gun and equates firearm possession with pathogenic infections; this is probably not the best person to be the representative for our public health.
So, goodbye, Vivek – and good riddance.
The post Goodbye, Vivek! appeared first on Noodle Pundit.