The Sunshine Empire

The fight over health care reform seems to be getting to red zone time with the reported public option compromise in the Senate. You know that the bill is close to a completion that many thought was impossible by the increasing level of hysterics coming from conservative sources and the Obama deranged. Two evenings ago a young lady I went to high school with was tweeting different scary things about the health care reform bill in the senate, most of which were old recycled things that had already been debunked. Conservative opponents of the bill have always looked to defeating it not based on the merits, but based on the possibility of damaging the President. The bill is not perfect, but it doesn’t help when the other side has no interest in actually passing any reform. This young naive lady continued the process of quoting what seems like a line in the bill that requires jail time if you do not purchase health care. Now to any intelligent person that would seem absurd. It’s so absurd it’s not even in the bill. It’s a quote from normal tax code for anyone that fails to pay taxes. Less than 500 people were actually jailed last year under that law. But why do something so disingenuous when your political position on health care reform is right?

Now as wrong as Harry Reid was to insinuate that health care reform opponents are on the level of slavery defenders, those against reform have stooped just as low by producing a series of ridiculously childish commercials saying, “I guess I must be racist” for being against reform. Now I find these commercials particularly funny for one reason. Conservatives have for years slammed Jessie Jackson for the opportunist he actually is. They tell us he shouldn’t be trusted nor taken seriously. No thinking democrat or liberal actually pays attention to Jessie Jackson any more. Now the commercial cannot use any footage of any elected democrat saying that opponents of health care reform are racist, because none have. What they do is quote Jessie Jackson saying you can’t call yourself a black man and vote against health care reform. This clumsy attempt to paint reform advocates as irrational ignores countless documented cases of highly racist imagery, but those against reform are not racist just because the man leading the fight happens to be black. They’re just wrong.

But someone could be excused for thinking that someone that brings a picture of the leader of the free world dressed up like an African which doctor may harbor racist sympathies. When people quote lines of the normal tax code that mention jail time when they are not in the actual bill, you can be excused if you see motives other than disagreement with the actual bill. There are actual issues with the bill and even progressive democrats point them out, but those actual issues never come up in the debate with the political right. They will decry cuts in Medicare one day saying they are protecting seniors, then the next day declare that it’s a horrible program when some propose lowering the qualifying age. Why should someone who tries to scare you with deception be taken seriously in a political debate. Democrats have presented ideas, however flawed they may be. Republicans have offered nothing but death panels and threats of non-existent jail time.

The Republican calculus on this was based on the flawed belief that the 1993-1994 playbook could be used to retake political power. In 1993 Bill Clinton’s efforts at health care reform never came to any vote. Today the ball is 90 yards down the field, and compromise could prove that Republican hopes for a Obama Waterloo are highly presumptuous. I predicted that Obama would have a bill without a public option signed by the end of the year. We seem on the doorstep of that this afternoon.

Related posts:

1. Lying Works In The Fight Against Health Care Reform
2. Conservatives Against Health Care Reform, And Apparently Jesus
3. Historical Perspective On Health Care Reform Before The West Coast Swing
4. I’m Sick Of The Health Care Reform Argument
5. The Realities Of Health Care Reform And Dating Megan Fox