Republican bobble-head #1 Michele Bachmann made the following rather savory comments during an interview in
WorldNetDaily the other day:
“I think the reason is because President Obama can’t wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care...once they enroll millions of more individual Americans, it will be virtually impossible for us to pull these benefits back from people. All they want to do is buy love from people by giving them massive government subsidies.”
The problems with this statement are obvious, and well-documented: the dog-whistle racism, the coded language, the absurdly false equivalences, and so on. The fact that this woman and people like her continue to have any credibility whatsoever is yet another indicator of just how dangerously insane the Republican party has become, and how much they've hijacked the so-called 'liberal' media establishment in America. What's not been explored, however, is the remarkable tendency of Bachmann to provide the occasional, almost oracular glimpse into her party's pathology, and the rationale behind their constant, incomprehensible displays of hysteria, particularly surrounding the issue of the Affordable Care Act.
Of particular note is her remark that “once they [who exactly is 'they', anyway? The government? Hell, I don't know who 'they is, and I'm not sure she does, either] enroll millions of more individual Americans, it will be virtually impossible for us to pull these benefits back from people.” However tone deaf and trailer-trash-tasteless her remarks might be in sum total, this specific utterance speaks the real truth about why the Republicans so vehemently oppose the Affordable Care Act, and of their dogged pursuit of its repeal: they are afraid of the law's potential for lasting success and popularity after it takes effect, and their inability to dismantle it because of that.
Think about it: if the GOP knows for certain that the ACA is a legislative doomsday device, one that will wreak financial havoc the moment the clock strikes midnight on January 1st, and that its piss-poor performance will deliver Obama's already beleaguered approval rating straight to the firing squad, then why not let the bill go live, stand back and bear witness to the debacle, then laugh their way through a mid-term electoral landslide in 2014? Because that's not what's going to happen, and they know it. You can see the fear in Bachmann's beady, hollow eyes; the GOP has lost this battle, and their refusal to admit it will cost them dearly in the coming mid-term elections.
Obamacare is fraught with problems, to be sure. But despite its imperfections, the Affordable Care Act is going to help millions of Americans get the care they and their families so desperately need, and break the stranglehold private, for-profit industries have over their health and well-being. This is the Republicans' greatest fear: empowering the public makes them a threat to the security of not just the Republican Party, but to that of the elite, ultra-wealthy constituency they are beholden to, and as we have seen with the current government shutdown, they will go to any lengths to maintain the security of their masters, even shooting the hostage.