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Monday, March 15, 2010

The Murder-Suicide You Say You See May Be Your Own

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said "Nancy Pelosi… has got [Democrats] all liquored up on sake and you know, they're making a suicide run here… This makes no political sense [to] take a bill the American people dislike ... pass it along party lines, using gimmickry to get it passed[.]"

Gov. Mark Sanford's (R-SC)… released a statement earlier saying that today -- March 15 -- is the day Julius Caesar was murdered, sometimes known as the Ides of March. The day is usually associated with a sense of foreboding, and Sanford warned the public to be wary of health care reform. Trent Lott agreed today on Fox News: "Shakespeare warned us to beware the Ides of March. That's today, and I have a very ominous feeling about what's fixing to happen on health care votes."

It doesn't take a genius to realize that if Republicans were really so sure that healthcare reform is a kamikaze suicide run on the part of Democrats, if they really thought the American people will disapprove of the reality of healthcare reform as distinguished from all the death-panel and socialist nonsense that will be exposed as nonsense the moment we shift from histrionics on air to policy on the ground, if they really thought this reform would decimate the Democrats for a generation, and all the rest they would be gloating rather than freaking out at the prospect as they are. It isn't hard to grasp what might make Republicans feel "foreboding" in this moment rather than triumph.

We all know that Republicans have opted for unprecedented obstructionism -- even of ideas and bills they themselves have always supported hitherto -- as the only way to turn the tide from the emerging Democratic majority arising out of demographic shifts as well as in the aftermath of the unmitigated catastrophe of Republican rule in recent memory.

They tried and they look to have failed to stop the beginnings of healthcare reform Democrats have been struggling to get underway for generations. They have failed and now they are freaked. It shows.

Whatever the imperfections of healthcare reform -- and as a single payer guy you may be sure that I can list these limitations as cogently as anybody -- to fight for its repeal as the Republicans are claiming they will do will mean to fight for the repeal of protections against denials of coverage for "pre-existing conditions" and arbitrarily skyrocketing costs and a whole host of truly evil and hated obscenities of the present for-profit healthcare non-system being deceptively defended in the name of stopping "socialism" and "death panels."

Rather like the Republicans who fight the extension of any equal rights for lgbtq citizens always claiming plagues of frogs and rivers of blood will ensue if they fail, the moment the rights are extended and the apocalyptic outcomes fail to materialize the idiotic arguments to the contrary evaporate and the bigots and idiots give up and move on to the next crusade of lies in defense of some other patch in the ugly bloodstained patchwork of the status quo.

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