There is a quote that is commonly attributed to Einstein, but which was probably originated by the author Rita Mae Brown in the 1980s: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." This quote perfectly describes the 40th vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the GOP-dominated House of Representatives.
Apparently, the GOP believes that that opposing Obamacare will help them in the 2014 midterm elections. It's a case of repeating the same failed policy, in the hope that it will help them pick up some congressional seats. Same... old... playbook. Oddly enough, FreedomWorks has an even more bizarre gambit to rally the opposition to Obamacare:
"We're trying to make it socially acceptable to skip the exchange," said Dean Clancy, vice president for public policy at FreedomWorks, which boasts 6 million supporters. The group is designing a symbolic "Obamacare card" that college students can burn during campus protests.
I don't know how they expect to gin up the youth vote by replicating the social protests of the 1960s- seriously, I preferred Barack Obama to Hilary Clinton in 2008 precisely because I didn't want to see yet another election portrayed as a referendum on the Vietnam Era.
FreedomWorks actually treads on dangerous ground by having a campus protest that hearkens back to the burning of draft cards. Throughout the "War on Terror" era, College Republicans have been notoriously pro-war but anti-enlistment. College Republicans burning "Obamacare cards" on campus would only serve to remind other students that these young conservatives are a bunch of cowardly chickenhawks- a couple of "Yellow Elephant" posters in the background of these protests should send them skulking off in shame... if they had shame.
I first heard the "Insanity" quote when I did my first twelve steps in 1994. I just assumed, by the way the speakers seemed to own it, that it was from the the Big Book.
ReplyDeleteThe key thing to remember is that the core of the Affordable Care Act goes live in January. Once people start receiving the subsidies and getting coverage denied them for years or decades it's going to be pretty damn near unpossible to unring that bell.
So it's a bit of a good news/bad news thing. The bad news is the hysteria is going to get cranked up to eleven between now and then, but the good news is it'll all mostly end in a few months. Medicare had a similar history during implementation...
The only real leftist in the race, Dennis Kucinich, opposed Obamacare as a sellout to Big Pharma and Big Insurance. He relented on the day before the vote after O took him aside. But it was an endorsement in name only because, as Kucinich said, it not only fell short of National Care or even Public Option, but he found no signs in Obamacare that it was a foundation on which to build on same.
ReplyDeleteBut then, you probably beleived O
wouldn't go on a drone bombing campaign and surge in Afghanistan, failing there too.
I don't know that the benefits of Obamacare will overcome the pain of long term unemployment.
ReplyDeleteI know Paul Krugman has been beating the drum. He also beat the drum for the stimulus, which was woefully short.
The GOP would be dead if right-wing Democrats didn't keep resurrecting them.
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Authoritarian ick buckets setting things on fire? That always works out well.
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