Thursday, July 25, 2013

Vandals, Doing What Vandals Do

Today's read is from center-right political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (!) Norm Ornstein, who decries the "contemptible" behavior of Rethuglicans in trying to sabotage implementation of Obamacare:
... [T]o do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation—which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil—is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate—even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists—takes one's breath away.
As usual, please read the entire piece. 

If one steps back from all the rhetoric and noise and looks at what's going on here in the simplest terms possible, they would see a party trying its utmost to keep fellow Americans from getting basic health insurance and, therefore, basic health care.  And, as Ornstein notes, that same party also wants to benefit from causing this misery for others.

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