From www.rollcall.com
Unable to mount a filibuster on their own and calculating that Democrats are on track to send a health care bill to Obama by year’s end, Senate Republicans figure the only way to stop or reshape the measure is to give the public enough time to figure out what’s in it and what they don’t like about it.
Doing that is going to take some time, and the process of amending bills during a floor debate — which can include demanding a 60-vote threshold for all amendments — could provide the minority ample opportunity to slow things down.
And even though GOP Members will discuss their counterproposals for health care reform, criticism of the Democratic bill will be the priority.
I think the Repugs should adopt that as their party slogan. It would be one of the few statements that they make nowadays that is actually true. Ever since Tricky Dick wormed, lied, and slimed his way back into the national spotlight and won the presidency in 1968, the Republican party has been the tool of right wing extremists, Neocons, and ideologues. And having fully donned the mantle of BFF of Big Business, they have reaped billions of dollars from corporate largess. As a result, they have become the party of the financially elite. They let their word go forth that from that day, they would do the bidding of the powerful and rich. They have kept their word all these years.
If, as they say, timing is everything, the Republicans rise to political dominance over the last 40 years coincided beautifully with the dawning of the fourth "Great Awakening" in America. The Republicans quickly realized that the rise of religious conservatism and the call for the renewing of "family values" were ideally suited for the manipulation of the masses. They quickly jumped on board the Salvation Express run by the barons of biblical bluster, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. And the deal the Republicans made with them and the rest of their ilk promised the dismantling of the wall between Church and State in return for hundreds of thousands of votes.
This true axis of evil, Republican politicians, big business and religious charlatans, has been built on the backs of the little people. It is also the world's largest "bait and switch" scam ever. These people who are honest and devout in their own beliefs have had that very same willingness to make that "leap of faith" into the grasping covetous arms of scheming politicians whose sole purpose is to maintain power and control at all costs regardless of the hardships and repression of basic freedoms that would befall the un-chosen. The promises they have been made by the Republican mountebanks have been just as nebulous and ethereal as any biblical prophecy. And like those prophecies, the promises have yet to be realized.
And so it continues. These very same Republicans who have done absolutely nothing all the years they have held power to safeguard and insure the health of the American people, now plot and plan daily to derail the first real chance this country has had in the last seventy years for true health care reform. They do so for the most venal of reasons. Such a program would have no benefit to them or their corporate masters. In fact, it could be the coup de grace to an amoral party which has already been mortally wounded. Always remember there is nothing more dangerous then a wounded animal.