"Blocking health care for 500,000 people is huge plus in GOP primary"

[applegrove]

Blocking health care for 500,000 people is huge plus in GOP primary
By Greg Sargent at the Plumb Line (WP)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/04/25/blocking-health-care-for-500000-people-is-huge-plus-in-gop-primary/

"SNIP......................



“Thom Tillis has a proven record of fighting against Obamacare. Tillis stopped Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion cold. It’s not happening in North Carolina, and it’s because of Thom Tillis.”

The expected GOP Senate nominee for North Carolina is boasting, in effect, that he is the sole reason 500,000 people in the state he would represent will not get health coverage under the Medicaid expansion. This quote comes from a radio ad Tillis ran this week in the GOP Senate primary.

This will be another interesting test of how the actual GOP position on Obamacare — get rid of it and its benefits for millions — will play politically, as the law’s implementation has made it harder and harder for Republicans to campaign on abstract notions of “repeal and replace.” It’s slowly sinking in with the national press that Democrats are not uniformly running away from the law, and that the GOP repeal stance just might have problems of its own.

....

This week’s New York Times poll, by the way, found that North Carolinians support expanding Medicaid by 54-36. Also noteworthy: The “Moral Mondays” movement that has arisen in the state was partly spurred by the decision not to opt in to the Medicaid expansion. And so, if one of the core challenges Dems face this fall is getting out their core groups, citing the Medicaid expansion might be one part of the argument designed to galvanize them.

More broadly, if Dems can use Tillis’ boasts about blocking the Medicaid expansion for half a million people — apparently a big plus in a GOP primary — as part of a broader general election case that the conservative economic agenda is bad for the middle class, this would be another way the politics of Obamacare are proving to be more complicated than the tidy GOP political narrative has it. Dems are going to go hard at Republicans over the Medicaid expansion, even in some red states. And the politics of this are murky for Republicans: Note that GOP Senate candidates Scott Brown, Tom Cotton, and Terri Lynn Land have all refused to take a position on it.



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[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. WTF is wrong with these people?

When did sociopathy become a virtue?

What's next - campaign ads showing the candidate proudly evicting poor families from their homes? Snatching plates of food away from hungry orphans? Drowning puppies? Kicking walkers away from infirm old ladies? They might as well grow Snidely Whiplash moustaches they can twirl while cackling evilly.

[applegrove]

2. I know. Up is down, evil is good, in is out.

[riversedge]

3. It is unbelievable to me that he would be bragging of this 'achievement'!!

[RKP5637]

4. This is just my theory if even that ... but I think there well might be a casual correlation

between this type of thinking and religious guilt. I have run across so many people that feel they are sinners, that need to be punished ... this becomes so bizarre that sometimes I think they are seeking punishment, almost a sadomasochistic relationship. If I were still looking for papers to write (a long time ago), I would explore this relationship a bit. These individuals are voted in and they vote them in again. It's almost like one who is in battered in a relationship that stays on ... well, not exactly that, but that drift.

I also think a skewed capitalistic mess as we have breeds sociopathic behavior, at minimal mimics it ... this, is not a healthy society in many areas of the country ... especially evident when one brags of screwing over people and is a poster child.

[applegrove]

5. For sure following the leader in the GOP with this hateful brag would put one

in the category of follower. And followers feel weak and need to scapegoat, thus the doubled up sadism to those weaker than the politician here. In the end, he, and so many like him, are pawns and patsies. Not a strong bone or organ in their bodies.