WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives was set on Thursday for a cliffhanger vote to repeal Obamacare, as Republican leaders worked to deliver President Donald Trump a win for one of his top legislative priorities.
House Republican leaders have expressed confidence the bill would pass and several party moderates who previously objected to it got behind it on Wednesday, giving the effort new momentum.
Still, the vote was expected to be close. Even if the measure passes the House, it faces daunting odds in the Senate where Republicans hold a narrower majority.
The Grand Old Party.
Say it with me.
Sounds better than Republican.
A Republican, when I was growing up, wore grey clothing and had a very bad haircut. He went to non-Union barbers in Roseland. There were not many of them. They took commuter trains to work in the Loop at places like the Board of Trade, Quaker Oats, or Morton Salt.
They were Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists and Non-Denominational Billy Graham fans. They were the minority population of Englewood, the Highlands, Scottsdale, West Lawn, or Brainerd.
Their kids went to public schools, belonged to the Cub/Boy/Girl Scouts, the Y and went to Bible camp in the summer.
Our Dads took the bus, the L, drove early model Buicks, Pontiacs and Chevys to the Stockyards, Standard Brands, Central Steel and Wire, Kenwood Construction, Boyington House Movers, Donahue Steel, the County, City Hall, Canfield's Bottling and National Can Corporation. Some worked in the steel Mills over by the Lake, most worked nearby.
We went to parish grammar and high schools or high schools operated by the Carmelites, Sisters of Casmier, Mercy Nuns, Irish Christinan, or De LaSalle brothers. Some very few were educated by the Jesuits at St. Ignatius - they were really smart.
We swam at Park pools and they swam at the Y.
We stayed out of the Y - naked swimmers and birth control.
Politics was as easy as being a White Sox, or Cardinals fan. I do not recall any great affection for George Halas's team back in the 1960's. We liked Green Bay, Oakland and the Jets.
The Cubs? I knew two families, the Sitorouses and the Balinas. The Balinas moved to Rolling Meadows, wherever the hell that was, in 1964. Nick Sitorous went to mass where Louis Farakhan demands that the Jews get what's coming to them and whitey too. Nick was Greek. He was not a Republican, but he loved the CUBS and fixed television sets.
The rest of us were Italian, German, Belgian, Dutch, Polish, Lithuanian, Jews and where I lived predominantly Irish. Many of the younger families were mixed. Diversity was called white flight bigotry.
The Republicans could never win an election. They supported Planned Parenthood, used to belong to the Klan, kept Catholics and Jews out of the American Eagles clubs and kept to themselves, which was OK by us. We waved. They waved back.
I remain a Democrat, even though the Party is more like the cold, humorless and robotic GOP that I recall from my wonder years. I voted Democrat for President until Barack Obama. I had gotten to know young Barack Obama, executive director of the Woods Fund, congressional candidate, Illinois State Senator and U.S. Senator, before he became the Untouchable Candidate and President. I found him to be a dope. He has not let me down.
Worse, the Democratic Party, which had once been as honestly invested in the neighborhood and its people, as any parish, had become a branch of the Unitarian Abortion and America's Biggest Critic Book and Alchemy Club.
Try and find a union bug on a Progressive Democrat's business card. Good luck with that.
However, The GOP is worse.
They are screw-ups. Hand a Republican a winning Lotto ticket and he goes to debtors prison.
Obama had some of the nastiest, wealthiest and committed people in America directing his every prompt, move and triumph. The Progressives.
The GOP remains dominated by the tasseled loafer crowd of Judge Smails opportunists like John McCain ( for whom I worked like a dog in 2008, only to watch him quit like Girl Scout in a downpour ditching the cookies and heading home), Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and so many others. Paul Ryan has become as noodle spine-ed as Yertle the Turtle and the other two war-happy phonies.
With seven years of whining about ObamaCare, the Budget and House Committees on Everything, the people voted in change at the executive, legislative and a tiny,tiny bit at the judicial branches of government. The GOP benefited and has done . . .nothing.
I credit President Trump with keeping his promises and energetically doing exactly what the American people demanded.
Right out of the chute, Paul Ryan screwed the pooch on the Affordable Health Care recall.
Now, only weeks later the GOP are trying to force another failed vote.
These clowns are like a very few of my students who write forty characters of a 500 word essay on Frederick the Great in dull tipped pencil on a single page badly torn from Tommy Doyle's notebook on the way to school, when Times New Roman # 12 font is required and MLA citation demanded, without any mention of Prussia, much less the Enlightenment- " Is this what you wanted?"
Is THIS your homework, Larry?
That is the GOP.
I do not consider President Trump to be a Republican.
I find hope and change in that fact.
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