Posted on 03/09/2010 4:53:35 PM PST by presidio9
Googling to my heart's content on a recent eve, I decided to match "health care" with "ram" to see what would happen. What I got was about 9.8 million hits, some of them right on the nose and reflecting the current conservative meme that after more than a year, several votes, countless presidential speeches and having to look upon the face of Harry Reid some 10,000 times, the health care bill is being "rammed" through Congress - an absurdity that now has currency through sheer repetition. It is not exactly the renowned vaunted Big Lie, just a miserable little one.
The vaunted reasonable man might protest that an entire lifetime of attempted health care reform does not amount to a ramming, but the polls do suggest that President Obama's plan - and it is now his plan - is out of favor with the public. This is what now passes for a compelling argument against the bill. It is, instead, almost entirely beside the point.
In our poll-driven culture it might seem strange for a President to attempt something that's somewhat unpopular but merely right. After all, the health care bill has almost no near-term benefit for anyone who votes. Its immediate beneficiaries are the uninsured, consisting of the poor and vulnerable, and the young and delusionally invincible. As a voting bloc, they largely don't.
The rest of America looks at the bill and shudders. It seems to promise nothing but hardship. The aged have Medicare, and most workers have insurance of some sort or another. Sure, many fear losing what they now have and they rightly hate insurance companies, but they seem to prefer their existing plans to what they have been told will be a program run by sullen former Soviet bureaucrats. Opt out and you will be liquidated.
Great Presidents lead. In a sense, Lincoln "rammed" through the Emancipation Proclamation just as FDR "rammed" through lend-lease, Truman "rammed" through desegregation of the military and Lyndon Johnson "rammed" the Civil Rights Act down the throat of a gagging South. These might be considered more dramatic issues than mundane health care, I grant you - but grant me an exception for someone putting off doctor visits because he or she can't afford to be sick. To that person, this bill is as dramatic as the difference between sickness and health - the great divide of mankind.
The baleful fact is that the country suffers from a surfeit of democracy - a gazillion interest groups, a gazillion blogs, a gazillion talk shows and all of them insisting on transparency so a gazillion eyes peer over the shoulders of politicians. The black but necessary art of politics shies from the sun. Little gets done. Back rooms have been turned into rec rooms and meetings are seminars. We are doomed. Worse, we are bored.
Google does not tell the whole story. It fails to answer what's wrong with the old belief - a virtual childhood mantra - that "majority rules"? It was never "supermajority rules," and the presidency was never intended as a weather vane, turning this way and that on the slight breeze of the latest poll. Lead and the people will - or will not - follow. Either way, ram the damn thing, Mr. President. Ram it!
The baleful fact is that the country suffers from a surfeit of democracy - a gazillion interest groups, a gazillion blogs, a gazillion talk shows and all of them insisting on transparency so a gazillion eyes peer over the shoulders of politicians.
Obviously, what this country needs is a LEADER./s
|
.
Obama Conviction
Sounds kinda nice.
|
The bill in question is not a year old (or 40 years old). It was passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve. It was passed only with the help of sleazy kickbacks to reticent Senators. Since that time, it was overwhelmingly rejected by the voters of Massachusettes. As a result, it would no longer pass in the Senate. There is no current house bill. The house is attempting to reconcile the Senate bill, which the Senate can no longer pass. Sounds like "ramming" to me, but I guess Dick Cohen knows a lot more about ramming than I do.
The Emancipation Proclamation, military integration, and Civil Rights were about getting equal protection for a discriminated minority class. As there is no Constitutional Right to health care, none of these analogies apply. If I were black, I would be just as pissed about this comparision as I would be when Dick Cohen's gay mafia tries this crap. BTW, it was the Democrat Party that opposed the Emancipation Proclamation, military integration, and Civil Rights. Liberals constantly need to be reminded of this, or else they end up trying to put us on the side of evil.
|
Thanks for this. Everyone who reads this would be serving his or her country if he took five minutes tonight and called all four of those numbers.
|
God Save Us, bump!
You’re doing GREAT work with those phone numbers and tables, Mrs. Don-o! We MUST keep fighting this Obama-PelosiCare monster!
Excellent post, presidio9!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.