Now it is not just “Socialism or the Big Bad Government take-over. It is not even “growing huge deficits” or “tax and spend Democrats”. Now they are attacking a very personally popular President.
How smart is that?
(Let me again state I, lefty that I am, do not care for the Obama pragmatism before I go on here.)
Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, gave Mr. Obama an opening to do just that the other day, and the president took it. Mr. DeMint called health care a “Waterloo moment” that could break Mr. Obama. The president struck back, declaring, “This isn’t about me.” But if Mr. Obama extends that line of attack to Republicans more broadly, and rams a bill through without their support, any claim he may have to bipartisanship will quickly evaporate.(NYTimes, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/politics/23obama.html?hp )
Maybe he should let go of that claim. They aren't really going to allow much bipartisanship anyway.
They are the party of “NO” too often.
Right-wing writer Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard told Republicans on his blog Monday that they need to resist the temptation to work with Democrats to find a solution to our health Care crisis. “This is no time to pull punches,” he wrote “Go for the kill.”(from dscc.org email)
And a more direct quotation of DeMint from the same dscc.org email:
On Friday, Republican Sen. Jim DeMInt of South Carolina ginned up his troops with this line: “If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
I also read somewhere that “Newt the Scoot” was another instigator of this stuff.
Now several questions occur to me.
Do I want the support of these guys on any bill? I will wonder why they support anything.
Do they understand that this President is still very popular personally? Do they understand how many American's will support an underdog or a perceived personal attack on a popular President? Duh!
Many of us were stupid enough to support G.W., and still do. Because we don't like personal attacks on our Presidents even when they are true.
The same holds true for Blue Dog Democrats. Not to mention if all these so-called Democrats are worried about is getting reelected, they might consider how even I am thinking about donating to get rid of them. Just because they irritate me. See even a lefty can have selfish moments without saying, “Well, maybe they have a point.”
I know it is nice to have Democrats control two branches of the Government at once but the Blue Dogs are not true Democrats to me. I voted for one here but I am wondering why I did. Yes, I do really know -lessor of the evils. Also, Supreme Court Judges are what the long-term is really about here so their votes are needed for that. Let's just hope they don't start pulling stuff with that too.
It is this. There is a blog I follow and on which I sometimes comment where the same person just comments that all who disagree are stupid idiots and the like. Except it is “STUPID IDIOTS!!!”. It ends the conversations basically for a few hours but many just go elsewhere to research-so it backfires.
So here I will resist calling the “Waterloo” Republicans stupid idiots or worse because it backfires.
Sometimes, Conservatives amaze me. They are so willing to accept whatever they are told when it happens to agree with what they already believe.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I am surprised, though. We are propagandized and indoctrinated from the moment we are able to hear, see, or read. We are told, again and again, that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are told that God and this nation are synonymous We are taught to pledge allegiance to a flag, a pievce of cloth, sewed and dyed to represent a country "under God". We are lied to, or told partial truths, by a government that has never, ever, been of the people, by the people, for the people. Our leaders have told us, time and again, that Capitalism isGodly and nothing else should be considered. Social programs are equated with Communism. Corporations have, long ago, found that the purchase of elected officials is easy and shows long-term profit.
I have spoken with many of my friends, family and neighbors about the "heath care reform," and the response is always the same: "We don't want it. It's Socialism". "It's a government takeover". Never mind that many of them are drawing on a Social Security account and dependent upon Medicare, both of which are purely "Socialism".
Never mind that the United States is the ONLY industrialized nation in the entire world which doesn't provide universal healthcare. Never pay attention to the fact that our level of health care has fallen to barely above the "Third World nations". They are sure that "It doesn't work". Ours is the only country where health care is a corporate business carried on solely to make a profit.
These same persons have said that they don't want anyone telling them "what doctor or hospital to go to". Considering that private insurance has told them, for years, that they will on pay if we see doctors, attend hospitals, that are "in network," you can see that they have watched the fearmongering ads of the Republican naysayers.
The real problem this nation must face is simply the ignorance and gullibility of its people and their refusal to recognize that a search for the truth does not consist of watching the Fox network.
My spouse and my daughter, both Registered Nurses, come home every day with horror stories of deaths and near disasters in the corporately owned, for profit, hospitals where they work. Stories of a woman denied treatment for a painful cancer because her prognosis didn't justify the expense; a woman, again, a cancer patient, whose insurance company will not pay for her treatment because the only hospitals offering that treatment are "out of network"; a woman who fell and injured her head and had surgery to remove a clot in the brain which required removing a portion of her skull, told by her insurance company that they won't pay for the second surgery to replace the bone, because it isn't life threatening. She can wear a helmet.
These aren't rare occurences. This is our "for profit" healthcare.
After speaking with friends, family, neighbors, it seems to be exactly what we deserve.
Thank you for commenting Anon.
ReplyDeleteEt tu Brute?
You sure got stirred up today.
I feel honored when someone uses this blog to comment and converse.
I see by your closing remark you are more jaded with your fellow humans than I.
Thanks again and keep 'em coming.
Kanna
Thank you for writing this. I have been upset with Obama lately, but I am not on the attack. It's amazing that Republicans will fight health care reform even though the current system is too expensive. It seems that they will spend a lot of money to keep spending a lot of money and for a lousy system to boot.
ReplyDeletePeople will continue to buy into the rhetoric and there will be no convincing them. This issue may be all our waterloos as a nation. I see only self serving politicians working to get what ever they can out of the system and not doing what is in the interest of those that they were hired to represent. I think maybe the dishonesty and corruption cancer has taken over and the patient is about to die. We have a lot more than health care to reform and maybe health care is being used as a smoke screen to keep the people from realizing that we have a lot of people to fire and a lot to change about how we allow these public servants to get elected in the first place.
Thomas,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment.
I really believe we need to get election reform big time.
I believe it was Bill Moyers who suggested each person pay $10.
Kanna