GOP whine: Drink deeply

[babylonsister]

(Edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot Moderator Democratic Underground)

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/republican_party/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/03/24/gop_whine

GOP whine: Drink deeply
Republican leaders and their TV/radio clowns are wailing about healthcare reform as a "Pearl Harbor." Good times!
By Gene Lyons


I love the sound of Republicans whining in the morning. Boo-hoo-hoo. The GOP lost the presidency and a big congressional election back in 2008. With the passage of President Obama's healthcare bill, they've now lost the most significant domestic political battle since the 1960s. So naturally the light of freedom has been extinguished, the U.S. Constitution voided, capitalism doomed and the nation fallen into a dark totalitarian nightmare.

Party leaders are increasingly solemn, diminishingly serious. The GOP's entertainment wing, its crack team of right-wing radio/TV melodramatists, has been thrown into a competitive frenzy. For sheer entertainment value, this stuff is hard to top. Surely some dark beast shuffles toward Washington to be born. Rush Limbaugh predicts that the nation's private insurance industry will be bankrupted. (Oddly, insurance company stocks continue to rise.)

snip//

Several things need saying. First, this latter-day GOP enthusiasm for governing by CNN poll stands the Constitution on its head. We determine who holds power in this country through biennial elections, not telephone surveys. Besides, where was all this solicitude for the randomly selected will of the people back when Republicans impeached Bill Clinton while polls showed that two-thirds of Americans opposed it?

Second, GOP paranoia over Democratic improvements to the nation's social contract is nothing new. In 1935, Republican congressmen greeted Social Security by invoking the "lash of the dictator," the "enslavement of workers" and similar nonsense.

In 1965, Ronald Reagan warned that unless Medicare was defeated, "You and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like in America when men were free." Instead, Reagan spent his sunset years as president making people forget he'd said anything so silly.

[FrenchieCat]

1. Yep.....

"GOP enthusiasm for governing by CNN poll stands the Constitution on its head."

CNN polls cooked up just for such purpose!

[Cha]

2. THis crop of republicons aren't smart

enough ..they took the easy way out and got what they put into it.

[madamesilverspurs]

3. And the last time they compared something to

Pearl Harbor, we wound up in Iraq. Their drama-queen maunderings may be bizarre, but we take them lightly at our peril. These are not altruistic people who greet the greater good with open arms.

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