Remember when political parties tried to use reason to sway public opinion? There seems to be so little on the Republican side. Rather than discuss health care, they seem intent on trying to stage riots during town hall meetings and get them on the tv as people angry about the direction of the debate.
Truth is, this country needs health care reform. Insurance companies too easily drop people when they cost too much money (which defeats the purpose of insurance). The CEO's make millions of dollars a year and there are incentives to cull the people who cost the companies too much money. Drugs costs are absurd. Drug companies have lied about drugs to get them on the market. Doctors cover up for each other. Patients resort to suing doctors when problems occur. The list goes on.
It would surprise me if the Republicans win this. People without insurance realize they need it. People with insurance realize that if people without insurance have insurance, the health care costs would go down for all because the insured are currently paying for the uninsured. Sending Republican operatives to town hall meetings to yell at the congressmen is desperate. Having the Republican operatives pretend to be ordinary people while doing this is just plain dirty. Cannot you not discuss health care on the merits?
What happened to the Republicans?
I suspect that the remaining Republicans are of such limited intellect, they can no longer debate the issues rationally and have to resort to staging events to create public opinion. Are there any moderate Republicans left? I think Olympia Snow (Maine) might be one of the few. The rest of the party seem to be a bunch of religious nuts who are too busy feeding at the trough of corporate interests to see what is best for the country as a whole.
The Democrats are not much better. They removed a provision to tax "golden health care benefits" because it would raise taxes on many union people since they tend to have very nice health care plans. On the whole, the Democrats are on the right side of this issue. We cannot continue down the road we're going and ignore the health care debate. Republicans had eight years to do something and only seem to want to wage war and get money to party cronies.
For all the people opposed to socialized medicine, stop using Medicare/Medicaid/VA benefits. At one point, this country believed that we should take care of the elderly, poor, and veterans. Now it is time to take care of all the people. I would rather the Republicans worked with the Democrats on health care, but I know that is futile with the Republicans we have in congress.
The Republican party is effectively dead. They have their own mouthpiece (Fox News), and they will always have a core of crazy people who will support them, but the majority of people do not tolerate the behavior of the remaining Republicans. I will welcome Republicans when they shed their crazies and are able to discuss intelligently the issues without saying that grandmothers will be put to death if the bill passes.
