It’s a mutiny staged by bullies.
That’s how I would characterize the disgusting behavior by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. They have shut down the federal government because they did not get their way – their obsession to kill ObamaCare.
Their obstructionist scheme was highlighted last week when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz – Tea Party hero – talked himself silly for 21 hours in what was a fake filibuster. In his meandering delirium, he told one whopper after another about ObamaCare. Cruz and other Tea Party ideological “purists” (“crazies” is more like it) have bullied reasonable Republicans that they had better get into lock step or else be defeated in primaries or elections back home – defeats engineered by ultra-right-wingers and the tons of corporate money they have been generating for smear ads.
What’s really disgusting is this entire Tea Party clamor to stop ObamaCare is a charade. They know they cannot de-fund or stop it, but they make the noise anyway because their grand-standing false bravado plays well with their base back home – those in-grown toenails who think the federal government is evil and Obama is a foreign-born socialist-communist devil. Some of these inflammatory bellyachers have even bragged about how great it would be if their tantrum tactics caused the government to shut down.
House Republicans have voted 42 times to repeal ObamaCare; it’s no wonder they don’t get anything else done. They cite public opposition to the law as their rationale. While it’s true the Affordable Care Act, so far, has less than majority public support, it’s also true the law has been so slandered by the far-right in a barrage of relentless fearmongering and lies, it’s no wonder so many Americans are confused about the law or are against it. A recent poll clearly reveals the confusion. In that poll, 46 percent of people oppose ObamaCare, and 37 percent of people oppose the Affordable Care Act – ironic results because the two are different names for the same law.
Millions of dollars have been spent to demonize ObamaCare. Such lies include death panels, people losing their current health insurance, a government takeover of the health-care system and thousands of companies laying off workers right and left to avoid having to comply with the law. None of that nonsense is true. The latest stupid efforts are the TV ads featuring Uncle Sam as a sinister gynecologist who is about to “treat” a young woman (an ObamaCare enrollee) who is squirming with terror. The message, of course, is “Don’t sign up, young folks!”
These grinches should be encouraging more people to sign up for health care. They should be defending the law, not de-funding it. Instead, they are – in the most mean-spirited ways – trying to gut the law while offering no solutions of their own to what has become a long-time moral and ethical disgrace – a lopsided access to health care in this great country.
The law’s detractors call it a “horror,” a “disaster,” a “train wreck.” They became more desperate in their apocalyptic rhetoric day by day as the law’s start-up date approached. These naysayers fear the ACA will prove to be a success, not a “train wreck.” And heaven forbid any Obama program should be popular. Horrors!
Of course, there will be glitches, setbacks and tweaks as the ACA develops. That is to be expected. And it’s understandable the law (or parts of it) will have its sincere critics. But the tidal wave of irrational hatred it has spawned among right-wing crazies is ridiculous, especially when they obviously haven’t read the bill or choose to purposely misrepresent it through lies, distortions and bogus fears. These purveyors of doom were even more ridiculous when they trashed the law, giving false drastic conclusions about it as if it had already been fully implemented..
If these grumbling bullies want to scream about train wrecks, they should just once consider the wrecks they themselves are causing to the U.S. Congress, to representative democracy and to the full faith and credit of this nation. Like monomaniacs, like off-course Captain Ahabs, these wreckers are willing to sink the ship in order to destroy their whale of an obsession, ObamaCare. The sooner these hellbent harpooners are dis-elected, the better for everyone.
