Sabotaging The Fight Against COVID

 

Amanda Marcotte, laying it on the line at Salon.com:

"As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post pointed out last week, 'After having gone to great lengths to impair our response to covid at best, and to actively sabotage it at worst, Republicans will claim the covid resurgence is only the fault of President Biden and Democrats.' While there are some people still telling themselves it's impossible that the same people who backed Trump would do something this slimy, it's been evident for some time now that Republicans are running the same playbook on Biden's efforts to end the pandemic that they did on Barack Obama's efforts to heal the country during his presidency: Sabotage the effort and pin the blame for the continued misery on the president and his party. [snip]

Perhaps the outrage over the vaccine mandate is real, but not because of 'freedom' or any of the other empty excuses Republicans are hiding behind. It's because Biden is messing with their 2022 midterm strategy. If this mandate works and brings COVID-19 under control, it blows up GOP plans to run on claims that Democrats 'failed' to end the pandemic. Never mind that it's Republicans who are actually to blame for discouraging vaccination. These folks are willing to kill thousands of Americans a week in a bid to get a political advantage over Biden, so they're not going to be constrained by the moral imperative to be honest."  (our emphasis)

We've already seen the likes of Florida's thuggish and reckless Gov. Ron "One Glove" DeSantis blame the raging Delta variant in his state on President Biden, when DeSantis has done everything to sabotage the fight against the virus. Other reckless Republican governors are following the plan: no to vaccinations and masks and then blame President Biden for the virus' surge.

Marcotte notes further that Republican opposition to Biden's mandates runs counter not only to public opinion, but to their allies in the business community who want a return to "normal". For now, as long as their Trumpist cult remains motivated and angry, Republican political hacks' sabotage and lying will continue. But it may finally get their attention when their donors in the business community hold off on contributing to them as they fight a return to "normal." Time, and mounting cases of COVID, will tell.

Dealing With Republican Sabotage

Paul Krugman has thoughts on how President- elect Biden should deal with Republican obstruction and sabotage:

...[A]lthough Biden is still talking in a comforting way about unity and reaching across the aisle, at some point he’ll need to stop reassuring us that he’s nothing like Trump and start making Republicans pay a political price for their attempts to prevent him from governing.  [snip]

No, what Biden needs to do is what Harry Truman did in 1948, when he built political support by running against “do-nothing” Republicans. And he’ll have a better case than Truman ever did, because today’s Republicans are infinitely more corrupt and less patriotic than the Republicans Truman faced.  

This scenario would be altered significantly should Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win the special Senate election in Georgia next month (Stacy Abrams would be happy to have your help on that).  Even if Democrats were to take the Senate, eliminating the filibuster seems out of reach, with conservaDem Sen. Joe Manchin in opposition. 

Regardless, it's already been made clear by Senate Republicans that they'll obstruct Biden's cabinet choices, judicial nominations, and anything else they can to try to make Biden a one- term president, just as they tried with Barack Obama.  We're hopeful Biden's team is planning how to make life miserable for Moscow Mitch McConnell and his party- before- country caucus when they begin their obstruction (we're sure they're smart enough to be well ahead of us on that).  Using every media platform they can to drive home the image of a spiteful, reactionary, recalcitrant Trumpist party in the Senate that's engaged in keeping businesses shuttered, our government from functioning, while thousands of lives hang in the balance must be one of the priorities of this effort.  Biden's election was a mandate, and efforts to sabotage his administration are sabotaging the will of the American people.

Other pressure points must be attacked as well to keep these two- legged rats on defense. With Democrats holding the House, there should be opportunities for Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Schumer to come up with a coordinated strategy to do just that.  They're dealing with a bad faith party that, as Krugman points out, is infinitely more corrupt and less patriotic than ever.  They must deal with it accordingly.

Is The Public Sabotaging Trump's Health Care Sabotage?

A funny thing seems to be happening on sociopath moron Donald "Rump" Trump's way to gutting the Affordable Care Act:

A record number of people signed up for ObamaCare in the first few days of open enrollment this year compared to the same period in previous years, several sources close to the process told The Hill. 

The surge in sign-ups, which was confirmed by an administration official, comes despite fears from Democrats that enrollment would fall off due to the Trump administration's cutbacks in outreach and advertising. 

On the first day of enrollment alone, Nov. 1, one source close to the process told The Hill that more than 200,000 people selected a plan for 2018, compared to around 100,000 last year. More than 1 million people visited healthcare.gov that day, compared to around 750,000 last year, the source said. (our emphasis)

We'll see if the trend continues through the open enrollment period, which ends December 15. In the meantime, if you don't have health insurance, or want to shop for the best plans, visit www.healthcare.gov before the deadline.

There's a bit more good news for now:

The House is unlikely to repeal the mandate to buy insurance under ObamaCare as part of its tax-reform bill, GOP sources say, though the issue could return down the road. 

President Trump and conservative lawmakers are pushing for the individual mandate to be repealed in the bill, but House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) has expressed worry that the controversial measure would jeopardize the broader tax-reform bill, given the Senate’s failure on health care earlier this year.

The lesson remains that for Republicans the only thing more important than taking health insurance away from people is to take their tax dollars and shovel them into the pockets of corporations and the one percenters.

The Republican "Insurrection" Metastasizes

Obama Derangement Syndrome. Yes, it is a bit like beating a dead horse, but the New York Times senses that we've entered a new phase in Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party efforts to undermine President Obama and his legacy:

It is a peculiar, but unmistakable, phenomenon: As Barack Obama’s presidency heads into its twilight, the rage of the Republican establishment toward him is growing louder, angrier and more destructive.

Republican lawmakers in Washington and around the country have been focused on blocking Mr. Obama’s agenda and denigrating him personally since the day he took office in 2009. But even against that backdrop, and even by the dismal standards of political discourse today, the tone of the current attacks is disturbing. So is their evident intent — to undermine not just Mr. Obama’s policies, but his very legitimacy as president. [snip]

If this insurrection is driven by something other than a blend of ideological extremism and personal animosity, it is not clear what that might be. But it is ugly, it deepens mistrust of government and it harms the office of the president, not just Mr. Obama.

There's a lot in the editorial between the "snip," so have a look.

All the key words are there:  "destructive," "rage," "denigrating," "insurrection," "animosity," "ugly," "mistrust," "ideological extremism," etc.  That we are even in this discussion, we believe, is a direct result of left and moderate voters not going to the polls in the 2010 and 2014 off-year elections, at the Federal, State and local levels.  It's what has saddled this country with a claque of ultra-reactionary office-holders who flaunt the popular will and Democratic governance, and who are determined to hold onto power at all costs.

BONUS:  Reinforcement of the above, via human/ reptile hybrid Dick "Dick" Cheney, from Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Trouble With The I.R.S.? Thank A Republican

The Republican strategy of sabotaging vital government services so they can say, "You can't trust government -- it doesn't work" is vividly demonstrated by what's going on at the Internal Revenue Service as tax filing time approaches:

... The shocking decline in customer service levels is purely the result of Republican sabotage of the IRS. With its draconian budget cuts and workforce downsizing at the IRS, the GOP isn't just making taxpayers miserable. Republicans are costing Uncle Sam tens of billions of dollars of lost revenue annually. 

A recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) summed up the impact for the IRS of having lost 18 percent of its funding and 13,000 agents since 2010 even as its responsibilities and the volume of returns jumped by seven percent. With the "tax gap" between what Americans owe and what they actually pay now estimated to top $500 billion a year, "IRS funding cuts continue to compromise taxpayer service and weaken enforcement."

So not only do Republicans get to make government look bad, they get the bonus of shrinking revenue through weakened enforcement.  To borrow a phrase from Charles Pierce, Republicans are the mole people.

BONUS:  The Fuxers are always happy to oblige when it comes to lying about government programs in order to get them defunded.