Cross posted on Texas Kaos and The Burnt Orange Report.
Why are Republican lawmakers so opposed to health care reform? Why do they show such heartless contempt for the under and uninsured? How can Republicans like TX Senator John Cornyn vote against SCHIP, insurance for poor children? Does he hate them? Why did TX Governor Perry reject federal dollars to extend unemployment benefits for the jobless? Does he hate them? Thousands of Americans continue to lose jobs thanks to an unregulated and a casino run economy. In most cases, when the job goes so does health insurance.
What has happened to Republican lawmakers? Why have they become so mean-spirited and narcissistic?
According to journalist Joe Conason of Salon.com Republicans have no empathy.
I am sure this is not true for all Republican politicians, but based upon the track record of many if not most Texas GOP, there is a strong element of truth to Conason's observation.
Conason argues that Republicans feel empathy toward suffering only when they or one of their loved ones faces adversity.
But why then do nearly all of the Republicans in Congress find it so difficult to empathize with the tens of millions of their uninsured and underinsured fellow citizens -- and so easy to contemplate the ruin of reform yet again, even though that means condemning hundreds of thousands to sickness, bankruptcy and even death? Why would they still insist, after 40 successful years of Medicare, that government must have no further role in ensuring decent healthcare for every American?
Perhaps the problem is that a certain kind of Republican -- often with a connection to the White House or Capitol Hill -- will only endorse government action to remedy the adversity they have experienced for themselves. The most recent example is Cindy McCain, the wife of the Arizona senator, who announced the other day that she suffers from migraine headaches, which she considers a "disability." She is outraged that the United States government only spends $13 million annually for medical research on migraines, and is bent on increasing that amount drastically. She is determined that a remedy will be found someday soon -- with federal money.
"I'm missing a large part of my life," she said. "I want to stay active. I want a cure."
Indeed, and so are the uninsured and under-insured who suffer from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental illness among others difficult and painful diseases.
Republicans hate big government but they turn to it to fix the messes, i.e. last year's monumental bailouts to Wall St. and the banks.
Republican lawmakers want big government to fix the mess, but they want no government interference or regulation that would put the brakes on the mess makers, like Bernie Madoff to mention just one of hundreds if not thousands.
Nothing wrong with that ambition, of course -- except that the McCain approach to healthcare, expressed during last year's presidential campaign, rejects government action in favor of market fundamentalism. His plan would have deregulated the insurance companies and diminished the insufficient protections that government now provides to consumers, while covering a tiny percentage of the uninsured. He is leading the Senate attack on the "public option" in the Obama health plan, because he thinks government is already too big and too wasteful.
Former first lady Nancy Reagan is another example of a Republican who, after watching her beloved husband recede deeper and deeper into the clutches of the cruel disease Alzheimer's, finally realized government funded research for the disease may have been a better idea than a Star Wars program.
A constricted compassion that arises solely from personal experience has somehow come to seem peculiarly Republican. The most famous examples include former first lady Nancy Reagan's crusade for stem-cell research and former Sen. Pete Domenici's campaign for mental-health insurance parity. While both were admirable and courageous efforts that resulted in important legislation, they were cast as narrow exceptions to conservative ideology -- exceptions grounded strictly in personal misfortune.
As we can see, Republicans can't do altruism. It is all about them and theirs. Let others be damned.
Republicans had better get a grip on reality, if that is possible, because after the President's speech the other night, an AARP poll (American Association of Retired people) reveals that most polled are in favor of health care reform.
This group far outweighs the grumpy mostly white, middle aged and seniors attending this weekend's teabagging event in Washington. Most look like they're on Medicare so what is their beef? The angry old grumps get the best health care that government money can buy. (I am a middle age white woman myself, by the way, and I am obviously all for health care reform. I also happen to have excellent health insurance that costs my employer and me far more than it should.)
Check out David Axelrod's comments on teabaggers on Face The Nation this morning. (Video would not upload.)
Wake up folks. Politicians on both side have been bought by the sugar daddies in the healthcare sector. Millions upon millions have gone into blocking healthcare reform.
$280 million from lobbyists; $75 million from TV ads and $23. million in campaign donations.
Now is the time to give our elected officials a piece of our minds. We have the facts, we have the data. Hold the pimped out sell-outs feet to the fire.
Let 'em know the World Health Organization Ranks us No. 37.