–Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), on the cloture vote for the health care reform bill
As the United States stands on the brink of a staggering legislative victory the likes of which no president has achieved in decades, Republicans across the land are weeping in agonizing despair, knowing that their artfully crafted and beautifully executed plan of TOTAL OBSTRUCTION is just hours away from resounding defeat, thanks to a determined Democratic supermajority.
But could it be that the Republicans’ ingenious strategy of acting like a bunch of racist nutjobs who literally do not know what to do with themselves ever since that colored Kenyan Muslim became president, is part of the very reason the Democrats were able to succeed??
Yes, according to most rational beings (no, this doesn’t include Fox News) like Jonathan Chait in his article, The Republican Health Care Blunder:
The United States is on the doorstep of comprehensive health care reform. It’s a staggering achievement, about which I’ll have more to say later. But the under-appreciated thing that strikes me at the moment is that it never would have happened if the Republican Party had played its cards right.
At the outset of this debate, moderate Democrats were desperate for a bipartisan bill. They were willing to do almost anything to get it, including negotiate fruitlessly for months on end. We can’t know for sure, but Democrats appeared willing to make enormous substantive concessions to win the assent of even a few Republicans…
But Republicans wouldn’t make that deal. The GOP leadership put immense pressure on all its members to withhold consent from any health care bill…And if they did succeed, the bill would be seen as partisan and therefore too liberal, too big government. The spasm of anti-government activism over the summer helped lock the GOP into this strategy — no Republican could afford to risk the wrath of Tea Partiers convinced that any reform signed by Obama equaled socialism and death panels.
And so Democrats found themselves all alone.
The Republicans eschewed a halfway compromise and put all their chips on an all or nothing campaign to defeat health care and Obama’s presidency. It was an audacious gamble. They lost. In the end, they’ll walk away with nothing. The Republicans may gain some more seats in 2010 by their total obstruction, but the substantive policy defeat they’ve been dealt will last for decades.
Meanwhile, on the Senate floor yesterday, Rhode Island Democrat, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (coincidence?) slammed Republicans for their “desperate, no-holds-barred mission of propaganda, falsehood, obstruction and fear,” which he said will result in a “day of judgment” by the American people.
When it turns out there are no death panels, when there is no bureaucrat between you and your doctor, when the ways your health care changes seem like a good deal to you, and a pretty smart idea, when the American public sees the discrepancy between what really is, and what they were told by the Republicans, there will be a reckoning. There will come a day of judgment about who was telling the truth.
There will come a day of judgment, and our Republican friends know that. That Mr. President, is why they are terrified.
Hahaha, don’t be silly! Considering they’ve already faced their biggest nightmare–not just any black man, but a black man with a brain in the White House–a few “harmless” lies doesn’t scare ’em one bit.
Or at least not like the terrifying soon-to-be reality of granting millions of Americans access to the same affordable, quality health insurance they already enjoy. Now that’s S-C-A-R-Y! **Shudder**