Anything that makes John Boener scream like the melting Wicked Witch is something I know instinctively must be a good thing. Yes, it's very trendy to say "it's not perfect," and "it's not everything we wanted," but the passage of the health care bill in the House yesterday is a bold step forward in the right direction and has provisions with real teeth and genuine progress. Just as importantly, it's a crushing defeat to those who continue to lie, bully, patronize and insult the people they claim to represent.
Bipartisanship can kiss my ass. Seducing, pleasing and appeasing the current Republican Party is as interesting to me as lopping off an arm. These people have allowed themselves to be taken over by extremists, imbeciles, racists, fear-mongers and ignorant thugs. They choose circus politics over good policy, the popularity of the mediocre and incompetent over responsibility, intelligence and common sense. The Republican political bible begins with the god Karl Rove, exalts cartoon prophets like George W. Bush, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, and demands its disciples receive communion from lunatic priests Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. The Right laughably and transparently throws around euphemistic bumper-sticker words like "small government" and "socialism" to thinly disguise their real agenda to relieve your conscience of any inconvenient feelings of responsibility toward your fellow humans.
I'm sure there are real arguments to be made from genuine conservatives but this crowd is not making them. I have friends and family members who talk passionately and intelligently about their conservative point of view, and sometimes I even agree with them, but this party, right now, at this moment, isn't interested in intelligent debate. Watch any five minutes of Fox News and you'll smell the familiar and sickening whiff of indifference, intolerance and naked cruelty.
Now take a look at the victors in yesterday's vote. What is their agenda? To provide health care to the people who don't have it, to prevent loss of coverage when you lose your job, to prevent the denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, to prevent your children from being denied coverage. Monsters, right? Un-American beasts! I'm sure you can understand why so-called protesters spewed racial, anti-Semitic and homophobic epithets at United States Congressmen on their way to vote for such "Nazi" legislation (yeah, the Nazis were really big on health care). These people aren't activists, they're a mob.
Make no mistake, this isn't an argument between thoughtful people with opposing viewpoints. This is a fight between good and evil. Good won yesterday. But as in any epic story, the villain doesn't go down easily and these particular villains continue to be formidable. But today the heroes have a right to stand tall and proud.
P.S. - These pieces say it all:
David Frum's "Waterloo"
Bob Herbert's "An Absence of Class"
Paul Krugman's "Fear Strikes out"