Handing the Republicans the Defeat They Deserve

It looks like the House of Representatives is headed towards an historic vote sometime Sunday to finally pass the initial Healthcare Reform that will accomplish four major objectives: [1] ensure coverage for an additional 30- to 35-million Americans who are currently without the ability to get insurance, [2] contribute to reducing the government deficit by over $130 billion in the first 10 years, [3] reduce Medicare waste and [4] is fully paid for.  Almost as a side-benefit to the supreme success of this accomplishment is handing the intransigent, insincere and totally disingenuous Republicans a sound DEFEAT of their tactics to put their goal of dealing a blow to the presidency of Barack Obama ahead of their duties to their constituents.

In doing this, I believe that they have perhaps unwittingly “bet the farm” of the 2010 mid-term elections on these tactics and I couldn’t be happier if this stupid strategy totally blows up in their faces. They have doggedly stuck to their “talking points” (even when provisions that they were addressing were long removed or corrected). They’ve flat-out invented “death panels” and other horrors based only on their desire to kill this legislation no matter what. They’ve said “we need to start over” yet when confronted with the obvious question of “what did you guys do in the name of Healthcare Reform” for the eight years you were in power (the answer, of course, is nothing) and they’ve made believe that some of their suggestions for elements of the overall legislation were not included in the Bill when they were. Frankly, I have little patience of sympathy for the “party of no”. They’ve dug their own grave with their fidelity to the fat donors and they’ve lost touch with the needs of common middleclass citizens. It’s no secret that I’m a left-leaning “progressive” and I relish the marginalization of the right. In my mind, they deserve to become the increasing minority as long as they put tactics and politics ahead of what is good for the country. Rather than become part of a sincere effort to reform Healthcare in America, they’ve sided with the big business interests of their healthcare contributors.