The Genie is Out of the Bottle

On Sunday night I was one of the many millions of people doing something rarely done, watching our Congress in action, live, during and just prior to the House vote on health care. In the course of the “debate” portion (an absurd misnomer for sure), one of the Republican speakers (I don’t recall which) used a 1964 quote from Ronald Reagan, which I found interesting. He used the quote both to inject the name Ronald Reagan, which has deity status with the Conservative Right, and to argue that even in 1964 Reagan was shooting bull’s-eyes on the subject of health care. What Reagan was attacking at that time with his predictions of lost freedom and lost liberty was Medicare. It was Reagan’s first political issue delivered on a national stage which he began to preach in 1961, the same year he was dropped as spokesman for General Electric and changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. In fact, he did little else during those years other than campaign against Medicare, ending with his famous keynote speech at the nomination of Barry Goldwater.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many Republicans in last Sunday's “debate” would openly demonstrate their devotion to Reagan’s “insight” by advocating the dismantling of Medicare (& Medicaid) along with stopping any attempt to make health care realistically available to the general population. John Boehner, the House minority leader and a champion of the if you say a lie with enough conviction and repetition it’s as good as true philosophy, screamed how shameful the House was in not carrying out the “will of the people”. Perhaps he felt the specter of Ronald Reagan behind him breathing sweet sound bites in his ears since Medicare never polled anything close to a 51% majority prior to its adoption into law. Nah…because the fact of the matter is that Reagan ended up as most Republicans are today, as stalwart defenders of Medicare, at least in any public setting.

The true opposition to the newly passed Health Care Reform bill (which is really more accurately a health care insurance reform bill) had little to do with health care. Every politically ambitious Republican I’ve seen interviewed since the passing of the bill is now putting emphasis on the righteousness of Health care reform and the injustice of their plans not being included (the 200 plus Republican articles contained not withstanding). The fact that the Republicans had control of the House for 15 of the past 23 years and never introduced any comprehensive health reform (but did manage to kill reform during 2 of the years they were out of power) makes their postulating a comedy, albeit a dark one. Why would they? They would never never never originate health reform because it would be contrary to the interests of their constituents. Not the duped tea party crowd I assure you, rather those powerful interests that are on the nipple end of our $1.7 trillion transfer of wealth: funds transferred from the health care consumers, taxpayers, and debtors to the for-profit health care industry. Whether you believe it or not, it’s the only thing that makes any sense.

The stark evidence of this could be seen in the days and hours before the vote. With Republican leaders holding signs from the Capital porticos egging protestors below to amplify their rage; protestors who held pictures of Obama portrayed as Hitler (as if fascism played a role?), signs with guns portrayed as a solution to meddling proponents, “activists” hurling homophobic slurs at Congressman Frank, and “patriotic” Americans outside and in the halls of the Capitol Building spitting on and calling out “nigger” to distinguished black Congressmen, including Congressman Lewis. The lunatic fringe that performed such acts may have been only the tip of an iceberg, but it was all the same iceberg. It is the sad result of unleashed profiteering zealots like Limbaugh and Beck, and political leaders like Boehner and Cantor, totally focused on their political ambitions, who have mastered the use of such meaningless generalizations as “government takeover”, “will destroy America”, “Socialism”, “rob you of your freedom”, “enslave your children”, “lose your job”, “lose your coverage”, and this Limbaugh predictive threat (which I think says it all): “lose your right to fish”!! None of it had anything to do with health care reform, let alone health care insurance reform. It only prays on ignorance and it undermines the moral integrity of a nation for the benefit of a small minority.

Ronald Reagan used the following phrase as a mantra in his election and re-election: government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. It resonated because it was combined with a conservative axiom that taxation is fundamentally evil, even if it’s necessary. The Reagan administration and the two Bush Administration then began to dismantle government regulations even as they expanded government and government debt exponentially (note that debt is just deferred taxation). Only in the Clinton “pay as you go” administration was debt accumulation temporarily paused. Republicans will now argue that “government” is the cause of all health care short comings, that “government” (currently with a distorted likeness of Obama) is poised to rob you of your wealth and happiness, and “government” can only be contained by, as Limbaugh announced yesterday, “ridding ourselves of those bastards”. They'll claim this even as they claw and scratch to be elected to (dare I say it)...government.

But on this one the genie is out of the bottle. They can’t go back, any more than they could on Medicare. The greater question is whether those who just succeeded can continue to turn an imperfect but necessary beginning into a workable future, in spite of the distortion and self interest.