I don’t like Sarah Palin. I don’t like Mike Huckabee. I don’t like Tim Pawlenty, and I certainly don’t like Michele Bachmann (Truly, the woman makes me want to vomit, then eat my vomit just to vomit again). But, despite my distaste toward these individuals, I give them some credit for loudly stating their beliefs. For the most part, I believe Palin and Huckabee and Pawlenty and Bachmann support what emerges from their lips. Is it mostly ludicrous, right-wing drivel of the worst kind? Yes. But it’s their ludicrous, right-wing drivel of the worst kind, and they’re sticking to it.
This is my long-winded way of saying that, in Mitt Romney, America has its worst breed of snake dung. He is the lowest offspring of the lowest offspring’s lowest offspring; an opportunistic piece of crap who will say and do anything and everything to position himself as a leading 2012 presidential candidate.
Sadly, it’ll likely work.
In the aftermath of yesterday’s fantastic health care victory, Romney issued the following statement:
America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better.
He calls his accomplishment “historic†— in this he is correct, although not for the reason he intends. Rather, it is an historic usurpation of the legislative process — he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in either chamber, bribed reluctant members of his own party, paid-off his union backers, scapegoated insurers, and justified his act with patently fraudulent accounting. What Barack Obama has ushered into the American political landscape is not good for our country; in the words of an ancient maxim, “what starts twisted, ends twisted.â€
His health-care bill is unhealthy for America. It raises taxes, slashes the more private side of Medicare, installs price controls, and puts a new federal bureaucracy in charge of health care. It will create a new entitlement even as the ones we already have are bankrupt. For these reasons and more, the act should be repealed. That campaign begins today.
Had Palin spoken such words, I would have sighed and moved on. Same goes for the other Republican tools. But Romney … well, he’s in a class of his own. As governor of Massachusetts, big ol’ Mitt actually led the fight for universal statewide health insurance reform—a fight that resulted in coverage eerily similar to, ahem, the package Barack Obama will presumably sign into law later this week. As Alex Massie rightly wrote in the Spectator: “In other words, Romney is now pledged to running against his own record. This is an unusual strategy but one forced upon him by a) his actual record and b) the temper of the Republican party and conservative movement. All this trouble over one tiny bill he signed when Governor of Massachusetts! Because Obamacre is, in the view of plenty of sensible observers, merely a souped-up version of the Romneycare Mitt signed into law in Boston – and that he boasted about during the 2008 campaign.”
Personally, I find the entire Republican anger thing laughable and sad. First off, the GOP had eight years under Bush to tackle health care reform … and didn’t touch the issue. At. All. Second, there was nothing underhanded or sneaky about this process. A Democratic president, elected along with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, went through proper legal channels to accomplish something. This isn’t a takeover or an attack on American values. Hell, elections are held for a reason. Bush spoke of his “mandate” after he was re-elected, and now Barack Obama is choosing to use his. Bravo!
Am I sad about the furor in Washington? No, but I am concerned. Forget the Becks and Limbaughs and Hannitys, because they’re media-generated freakoids. What troubles me is when elected officials go off the deep end, and encourage their followers to come along for the leap. Representative Randy Neugebauer, a conservative Republican from Texas, screams “baby killer” on the House floor as Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, discussed abortion-related aspects of the health care legislation. Bachman announces she’s drafting legislation to repeal the health care bill … even before waiting to see if maybe, just maybe, it works. Heated words are justified and violent acts are excused, all the in the name of what?
