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Tuesday, August 18. 2009
Cavers
Mark this weekend, not only for the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock, but also the time when President Obama and the Democrats — even with a commanding control of both houses of Congress — caved in to the Republicans and their hired hooligans who disrupted the town hall meetings. This will be the weekend when Obama and the Democrats lose their base and you count these past four days as the reason Democrats lose the elections of 2010 because the base, feeling stabbed in the back, will not show up at the polls.When the electorate gave Barack Obama the White House and the Democrats control of Congress, it was for change and part of that change was to be universal health care, covering all. Six months ago the Democrats began walking back from that promise when they decided a single-payer option wouldn’t even be in the discussions on health care.
Instead, what we got was the “public option,” a system patterned after the same plan federal employees, including the members of Congress, enjoy. Mainly because the president insists on a bi-partisan bill and Republicans would never vote for any single-payer plan. As it is, the federal government already has three single-payer plans: Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration.
It was a fool’s bargain because right from the start Republicans had already decided to say “no” to everything and anything Democrats put forth on any policy, be it the stimulus, the auto bailouts and of course health care.
Republicans complain about the auto stimulus plan, the one that gives car buyers up to $4,500.00 if they trade in their clunkers for greener, more fuel-efficient cars, even though the program is working.
Republicans, and their allies in the health insurance industry, stoked hatred and fear at town hall meetings with lies about “death panels” and “pulling the plug on Grandma.” One Republican, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, even went so far as to encourage the people showing up at the president’s town halls with loaded guns and not-so-veiled threats of violence: “It’s time to water the tree of liberty.”
When asked about the tone of the protesters at the town hall meetings, including the people who brought guns, Coburn replied, “Well, I’m, I’m troubled anytime when we, we stop having confidence in, in our government. But we’ve earned it.”
Coburn made no effort to denounce it or even agree there was something wrong with showing up and shouting down anyone who tried to speak for the health plans and he certainly didn’t consider bringing guns to town hall meetings a problem.
Chuck Grassley of Iowa, one of the Republicans the president thought he could count on to make good faith efforts to reach a bipartisan bill on health care has not only stoked the fear of “pulling the plug on Grandma,” he also said he wouldn’t vote for any bill that comes out of the Senate Finance Committee.
Despite all this, the president wants a bipartisan bill, which is now more of a fantasy then any I have with the girlfriends of my daydreams.
And now the president and his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, have signaled the White House is willing to drop the public option from the bill — even though Republicans will not vote for any health care reform bill.
The base of the Democratic Party is not happy and 60 House Democrats signed a pledge that they would not vote for a bill that didn’t include a public option.
The consensus of most people is that the president caved when he didn’t need to. Well yeah, the caving started when President Obama decided the single-payer option wouldn’t even be a part of the discussion.
The president needs to get back to his basics.
Conservative columnist Robert Novak died today. Can’t think of any time I actually agreed with Novak, but he usually made the discussion interesting. He was also a veteran. When the Korean War erupted, Novak quit his job as a sports reporter and joined the Army, serving in the war zone.Novak was given the title, “The Prince of Darkness” by a friend who said the columnist took a dim view of everything. Novak liked it so much he held on to it and used it for the title of his memoirs.
He will probably be remembered as the columnist who revealed the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a NOC (No Official Cover) agent who worked under cover in the Middle East and Europe on nuclear-related issues. She is married to former Ambassador Joe Wilson who was at the center of the Bush scandal concerning the phony allegation that Saddam Hussein’s regime received yellow-cake uranium from Niger. Novak was cleared of any crimes by the special prosecutor.
Twenty-three years ago, on the CNN program Crossfire, Novak got into a debate with Frank Zappa over rating music, restricting some music to adults only. It’s just about words … and Robert Novak was pretty good with words.
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