The right’s core dishonesty: How Obamacare became its own culture war

[DonViejo]

Hostilities to the law have become detached from the ideological and partisan antipathies that gave rise to them

BRIAN BEUTLER

Many people think of the right’s Obamacare hatred as an outgrowth of straightforward partisan and ideological truths. Movement conservatives broadly oppose the idea of taxing wealthy people to subsidize the lower and middle classes. They don’t like regulating the private sector very much either. Add in the political incentives they faced to uniformly oppose President Obama’s agenda, the zero Republican votes for the Affordable Care Act, and you’ve planted seeds of lasting hostility.

But the hostility has become so deeply rooted that it now stands on its own, detached from the ideological and partisan antipathies that gave rise to it.

It has forced conservatives to blind themselves to the law’s positive, unobjectionable qualities, and police those within their ranks who dare to acknowledge them.

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall called this reactionary phenomenon Obamacare McCarthyism. It ensnared Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who’s running for Senate in 2014 and had the temerity to suggest that Republicans shouldn’t just idly mock the law when it stumbles. A few years ago, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wy0., said he liked the concept of insurance exchanges — which are crucial components of GOP-backed Medicare privatization proposals and other conservative reform ideas — and now a hardline super PAC is using his words against him, as if he’d called for the creation of a public option.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/04/how_obamacare_became_its_own_culture_war/

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth