Dear America,
I was skimming the channels yesterday and I came across what appeared to be a conservative governors' symposium at which Scott Walker and Rick Perry were speaking. I could only stomach a few minutes of their self-congratulatory partisan narcissism, but they made a point that is worth considering. The public went Republican in 2014 while they seemed to have a greater affinity for Democratic positions: "Obamacare" is disliked by a majority, but only a minority wants it repealed; the majority of Americans want immigration reform, which we don't have only because John Boehner, the Republican House Speaker won't allow a vote that he knows would result in passage of a senate bill sent to The House almost two years ago; and while most Americans bemoan the growing disparity of wealth between those at the top and those in the middle (those at the bottom seem to have been forgotten by everyone), they elected more Republicans whose party opposes increasing the minimum wage because, they say, it is bad for business, which is a euphemism for the well-to-do whom the great majority if Americans begrudge their dubiously gained prosperity. There is a good question in all this. Why can't the Democrats succeed, not only in getting elected but in accomplishing what the majority seems to want? During the first six years of W's administration, the Congress was controlled by his party, and at that time, more than 60% of Americans wanted a single-payer system of healthcare, but that's anathema to the supply-side Republicans and so, they did nothing about our selectively available health care system. Then in 2006, I assume because of their failure to act on healthcare, among other things, the voters threw them out and elected Democrats who controlled Congress for the next four years--albeit only in theory--during which we at least got the Affordable Care Act, which Americans seem to recognize as being better than nothing. But in the course of the next three elections, the American voters invited the Republicans back into power...at least in both houses of Congress...and all the while, the Republicans have been promising more of the same politics that got them ousted from power in 2006 and 2008. Are we confused or stupid? That's not a rhetorical question; I really don't understand.
Obamacare is a perfect example of the ambivalence of the American electorate. During the Clinton administration, Hillary was charged with the task of putting together a commission to investigate the ways in which our healthcare system could be made to serve everyone, including the forty odd million who couldn't afford insurance. Her inquiry looked like it was leaning toward any one of a few different single-payer alternatives, but the Republicans proposed a free market alternative that ultimately turned out to be what eventuated under the next Democratic president. I'm sure you remember. Obamacare, though it didn't have a name then, was first proposed by the Republicans to preempt any attempt to institute a government run single-payer system that Hillary Clinton's commission might arrive at as the best alternative. But in case you don't remember, just recall that Mitt Romney made his bones in Massachusetts by overseeing the promulgation of that state's "Romneycare," which was the line-for-line precursor of "Obamacare"--no matter how much Romney denied it when he was trying to become president--and in Massachusetts it worked, which is to say that it will work in the United States as a whole if the Republicans will stop defaming and trying to sabotage it. All this should be obvious because it isn't opinion; it's documented fact...so much so that, except for reminders of the Republican etiology of Obamacare, all of it is in the news in one way or another every day between legal challenges to the law and Republican derision that they fall back on when they can't think of anything else derogatory to say about The President. But the voters turned a blind eye to history as it was being made and invited the viper into their bosom...again. Do we think that the Republicans have changed since last time? I doubt it, because every time they get the chance they let their conservative freak flag fly, ala Scott Walker and Rick Perry at that symposium I couldn't stand to watch.
Now, a second congressional committee has found that there was nothing exculpatory in the events before, during and after the Benghazi attacks in Libya two years ago. Yet, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham characterized this second report--the result of a bi-partisan subcommittee investigation led by a Republican and conducted by a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee--as "full of crap" and wants a joint subcommittee of the House and Senate to do another inquiry as John McCain, who is waxing ever more "crackpot-ic" as he ages, encourages Graham to run for president. It used to be that Graham was the voice of reason among conservative Republicans, but now even he is grasping at straws in the name of partisanship. He's like a dog with a bone when it comes to this Benghazi fantasy that the Republicans are trying to foist on the American people, and I don't mean that as a compliment on their tenacity, but rather as the observation that they don't seem to have the sense of a bull dog when it comes to the opposition. But then, what does that say about those of us who continue to vote for politicians like him? With each election since 2010 I keep hoping that sanity will prevail among the electorate and that we won't continue making the same mistake time after time, but with each election it becomes more difficult to be hopeful. To paraphrase a modern sage, when will we ever learn.
Your friend,
Mike
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