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Monday, November 02, 2009

Orrin Hatch Decries "Diabolical" Dems Who Want to Earn Power Solving Public Problems

via The Hill:
The healthcare reform proposals before Congress threaten the existence of the two-party system, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) alleged Monday morning. The health bills… will lead to Americans' dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues. "And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, 'All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party,' " Hatch said during an interview with the conservative CNSNews.com.

"That's their goal," Hatch added. "That's what keeps Democrats in power." That claim led Hatch to suggest that some Democrats are "diabolical" in their pursuit of health reform.

Those who are dying needlessly in the incomparably wasteful, callous, catastrophically failed for-profit insurance system that the Republicans have fought for generations to preserve, might be inclined to describe Democratic efforts in this regard as more angelic than diabolical.

That the Republicans could actually "preserve the two-party system" simply by participating with Democrats in good faith efforts to solve public problems seems not to have occurred to Hatch, who will taste instead the heady pleasures of his Party's contrary plan to blow out its own brains somewhere along the picturesque but self-marginalizing road to Crazytown.

One hopes Hatch is right that there really are a growing majority of elected Democrats who mean to maintain power through their devotion to the public goods of ensuring healthcare, education, and welfare for all, equity and diversity in the workplace and before the law, and an abiding investment in robust, sustainable infrastructure and public works. That's exactly how it should be.

People who hate good government should stop trying to get their sticky hands on it, and people who hear politicians tell them government is good for nothing should take their word for it and elect people who aren't so proud to be good for nothings to public office instead.

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