Why are there so many points being discussed regarding the Republican aspiration to eliminate "Obamacare" through a budget gimmick?
I hear many voices who mean well in their attempt to refute the ambition but there is a fundamental rebuttal that I hear no one arguing (except Obama, though without much impact).
Are we not a democracy? Do we not have elections of legislators? Don't we have a constitution that spells out clearly the process with which they legislate?
The GOP "plan" is antidemocratic. It's that simple.
Now I know they are angling this way because they are deranged, and I know that they would assert that "the American people are with us," and I'm sure they'd cite polls that "prove" their point (despite the true story of those polls being unclear), but that's not how our republic works so the media attention ought to run out of track on that point.
We should be talking then - if they insist on their "American people are with us" bullshit - about how this new type of government will work. If Democrats wanted, as Obama suggested in the only push-back of this quality that I've heard, to raise taxes on the rich (which has plenty of polling to attest to its popularity), could they then play an extortion game with the budget? How about gun control, which has some whopping polls to advocate for it - can hostages be taken for this? (there's something ironic about the language in that last one.)
Of course not. The republic was designed to avert such fickle governance. To consider the possibility is to reveal a profound misunderstanding of the Constitution and our government and by extension our history and our "sainted" forefathers.
It doesn't surprise me that the GOP proper and especially the Tea Party have this ignorance exposed so unabashedly, but why are ostensibly liberal people not feeling shame about humoring this strategy?
You can't legislate by extortion and revere the American system of government simultaneously.
It is unconstitutional to attempt to subvert the legislative process.