It’s starting to look like the Republicans are finally seeing the handwriting on the wall with regard to health insurance reform.
The signs are everywhere.
First we have the Club for Growth’s “Repeal It!” campaign. In this campaign, they are urging their candidates to sign the following pledge:
“I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.”
When you quit fighting the reforms themselves and move to vowing to repeal the reforms months from now, that smacks of a tacit admission that they know the fight is all but over.
This is supported by comments this week from Senators John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell.
Because Democrats have said passing their health-reform bills would lower costs, the question Cornyn said that should be asked of voters will be, “Are your health-care costs lower now in Nov. 2010 by virtue of passing this health care bill,” the Texas Republican, wearing his signature black cowboy boots under a dark pinstripe suit, told a roomful of reporters at a Monday morning briefing about the 2010 Senate landscape. “And I think the answer to that will be, ‘No, they’re not.’”…
He also said that if a bill passes, Republican candidates should campaign on repealing the bill. “I think that’s surely one of the things that they should and will run on.
You think that people will vote against Dems because legislation passed in the spring or summer didn’t magically lower people’s insurance rates in half a year? Really, dude? Just another example of how damn stupid Republicans think Americans are. Either that or they are trying to freak out Democratic candidates and think that they are dumb enough to fall for this crap.
“Every election in America this fall will be a referendum on this issue,” he said.The president today stressed the Republican ideas he included in his health reform proposal, but McConnell said that if the bill passes through reconciliation, “the only thing that will be bipartisan about this proposal is the opposition to it.”
Furthermore, he said, the American people are opposed to it. He said that Democratic leaders were misleading their members by telling them that the measure will not be politically damaging once it is passed.
“You ignore the overwhelming desires of the American people at your own peril,” McConnell said. “This is politically toxic in the extreme.”
More fearmongering in an attempt to scare Democrats. But it’s desperation, pure and simple and I think Democrats are smart enough to know that putting the country through a year of the sausage-making we’ve had to endure and coming out of it with NOTHING would be far more damaging to their electoral chances than passing this reform package.
Or how about this CODE RED!!! rally sponsored by the Michigan GOP this week?
“On the verge of ramming their version of health care reform through Congress!”“Bending the legislative rules and subverting the will of the people!”
“Stop the liberals from a radical government takeover of healthcare!”
“CODE RED! MUST ACT NOW!”
Very scaryTM!
The GOP is desperate. This rally is a repeat of the one held last August. Remember that? The one where Jackson County Commissioner Phil Duckham showed up with his swastika sign?
Like last summer, a counter-rally is being promoted by OFA, scheduled to start an hour earlier. And, like last time, we hope to own all four corners of the intersection where Rep. Schauer has his office before the teabaggers arrive.
Oh, and don’t you just love how the Michigan GOP retasked the Obama logo for their own? LOL!
It’s all a lot of desperate ploys to try to rekindle the teabagger hysteria of last summer and to frighten Democrats away from supporting health insurance reform. It is, of course, possible they will succeed. But I doubt it. Not now. Not with the president getting out in front on this issue every week. Not with the end of the fight this close at hand.
Noy gonna happen.
I’m just sayin’…
