Excellent article. Another key fact, Obamacare passed cloture with exactly 60 votes. Only one Democrat would have needed to be flipped and it never would have passed. On Christmas eve day 2009, the day of the cloture vote, the NRA had 10 "A" & "A+" rated Dems, 2 "B" rated (including Harry Reid), and 4 "C" rated. They could've easily flipped one D for the reasons Mr. Codrea points out. But they followed the establishment Republican/NRA tradition and worked with Reid & Obama to "fix" a socialist program, giving "A" & "B" rated Dems in pro-gun states the necessary cover to vote for it. Doesn't take much searching to find articles with statements like this: "U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote the now famous Obamacare gun provision which he inserted into PL 111-148 with the help of NRA President Wayne LaPierre. Why would a Democrat, Senator Reid, do this? When Senator Reid was up for re-election a couple years ago, he (a well known gun advocate) contacted Mr. LaPierre to help him get gun owners to vote for him." The NRA is responsible for the passage of Obamacare. But the NRA can now undo the damage and play the key role in repealing it. For the reasons Mr. Codrea discusses, now that 0-care is increasingly unpopular with the electorate and even anti-gun Democrats like Schumer are showing buyer's remorse, if the NRA does the right thing it could be easier in 2015 to get a 2/3 majority of those voting (e.g. 12 D votes for 66/99), than it would've been to get just one vote to kill it in the first place on Christmas eve day 2009. That's because it may again be the case that all the NRA has to do is flip one vote and the rest will follow, like the cascading fall of the Iron Curtain after Poland legalized Solidarity and it won 99% of the seats up for election, followed by the mass defection of 600 East Germans into Austria at the Pan-European Picnic. Given Zerocare's unpopularity and buyer's regret, it would most assuredly be far easier to get one "A" to flip now than it would've been in 2009, even though there are not as many "A" rated Dems now. But chances are the NRA would get every "A", and some or all "Bs" and "Cs", and indirectly some Ds and Fs, like Schumer. The NRA can be pressured to do the right thing by members, gun rights activists and conservatives calling talk shows, and by quitting NRA and moving to Gun Owners of America. GOA identified Obamacare as gun control and a Trojan Horse confiscation vehicle from day one, still maintains that position, and never fell for the Reid-NRA "fix". Similarly, the NRA is the key to winning the immigration/amnesty issue. The same pressure can be applied to get the NRA to stop indirectly supporting amnesty and excessive immigration. GOA has been alone among national gun rights groups in identifying invasion and amnesty as the great destroyer of gun rights in America, pointing to the tragic immigration-induced loss of California and studies showing that today's immigrants, including Catholics, come from corrupt, anti-freedom, anti-gun cultures and continue to lean heavily Democrat, socialist, and anti-gun after they get here despite craven establishment-Republican his pandering efforts. Others such as Rush Limbaugh observe that "Amnesty is Republican Party Suicide" -- which means it is also permanent gun rights suicide.Those are important factors to include in the mix. Compare them to this bit of "apologia":
Looks like the type of "reasoned" sentiment we routinely see from self-styled "pragmatists" arguing limited "political capital," doesn't it? Thing is, a quick click on the guy's DISQUS profile shows other comments including "Another Teahadist meets her maker" in response to a "gundeath" from someone who actually appeared to be one of his. That marks him as a troll, acting out the demonstrable sadist-psychopath / infiltrator-disruptor role that defines such pathetic moral and intellectual defectives.
Still, the comment is not without value -- just as we see editorials and statements by doctrinaire Democrats advising what Republicans should do on this or that issue -- under the guise of being helpfully observant, of course -- what's really happening is they're hoping idiots will be persuaded to put their (and our) heads in a noose. What's obvious is, "progressives" do not want NRA to become more effective by including issues that impact gun rights in the scoring criteria -- and that ostensible "pro-gun" voices discouraging that by crying "Single issue!" (a demonstrably false excuse) are pulling on the same side of the rope as the gun-grabbers.
They can try, but there's no getting around that key fact.
