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Over the last 15 months, the Republican congressional and senatorial delegations have proven themselves to be a herd of wild asses.
The most disgusting thing they did was not opposing health care reform, but lying about it day in and day out. There are no "death panels" authorized in this bill. Illegal immigrants are explicitly excluded. Abortion was never a part of this package. They lied about all of that and lied loudly. Some of the astroturf "plain folks" they sent out last summer even went so far as to compare President Obama to Hitler.
This is not a government takeover. Health insurance companies are still in business. If you ask me, that's a big part of what's wrong with the bill. After years of dropping coverage for those who become ill, jacking up rates and lining the pockets of crooked politicians (a bipartisan group if there ever was one), it wouldn't have bothered me in the least to see a Medicare for All proposal become law and replace these rackets with the government. Private health insurance companies are the spokes of a fifth wheel over one sixth of the American economy. It wouldn't be one sixth of the economy if those racketeers weren't lining their own pockets with money earned from inefficiency and waste.
This bill was far from perfect. A single-payer public system is still a proposition devoutly to be wished.
The tactics of the Republicans and the corporate lobbyists was abominable. They organized and sent lowlifes to town hall meetings for the purpose of disrupting them. Democracy is supposed to be about open, public discourse of civic affairs. The Republican Party and the health insurance industry formed an unholy alliance to shut down any public discussion of health care reform. The racism expressed by those who made up these astroturf mobs caused many to think they should have been dressed in white hooded robes. The very nature of their tactics suggested a fit uniform for each of them would have been a brown shirt and jackboots.
I bristle whenever I hear Mr. Boehner point to the astroturf mobs and claim that they merely expressed American public opinion. What nonsense! There was no widespread, grassroots opposition to health care reform at any time. A grassroots movement is not funded by corporate lobbyists like Americans for Prosperity or FreedomWorks. If there were polls showing that Americans rejected the bill, it was because a few crooked politicians in the Democratic Party or its Senate caucus, having increased leverage because the Republicans would not even consider voting for any bill backed by Obama's White House, succeeded in watering down the bill by taking away the public option and providing for an individual mandate to buy health insurance from the private racketeers. In other words, if Americans rejected this bill, it was because it was too weak, not because they rejected health care reform. Mr. Boehner's purpose was stop reform and propose nothing in its place, leaving the untenable status quo to continue; when he implied that Americans were opposed to health care reform, he was lying.
If the Republicans had opposed the bill based on what was in the bill, that would have been another matter. That is how it is supposed to be done. But they didn't do that. They didn't want to give the American people an opportunity to have an honest public discussion on the bill. Their astroturf mobs shouted down speakers at town hall meetings who wanted a public discussion and told a pack of lies in place of real information. That was last summer. This week, they spat on congressmen, called one a "nigger" and another a "faggot," and attacked a man with a degenerative neurological disorder, Parkinson's disease, and an eleven-year-old boy whose mother died because she was denied access to health care, who simply exercised their right speak out in favor of health care reform.
A political ally of Margaret Thatcher once said that the Tories would have to remain in power until Labour was sane enough to govern again. So must the Democrats remain in power until the Republicans are sane enough to govern again. When they have the courage to support or oppose a measure without lying about it, as they did during the Iraq War or about health care reform, and just discuss the real issues surrounding any given topic; when they are not appealing to the racist or homophobic fears of the ignorant; when they can accept opposition as sincere and heartfelt rather than question the opponent's patriotism or otherwise impugn the motives of the opponent; when they become less ideological and more pragmatic and can admit that an unregulated marketplace will descend into an orgy of greed and corruption, that a free market solution is not always the best solution and that government is not necessarily a "problem."
It has become clear in the last few months that the GOP has a long ways to go before it is sane enough to return to power. It would be a mistake for American voters to reward such malfeasance and dishonesty by giving the Republicans significant gains in Congress or in state governments.
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