by Lisa Longo, 10/6/13
Who saw Jimmy Kimmel’s great bit asking people if they supported the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare? Funny right? How people didn’t know they were the same thing. How just by calling it Obamacare you could find people who were “against” it. How they thought Obamacare was “socialist” and bad, but the Affordable Care Act was well, affordable and good.
It was funny in a sick and sad “I can’t look away from the wreck” kind of way. Mostly because in 1989 the conservative policy center, The Heritage Foundation, published a paper written by Stuart M. Butler titled “A National Health System for America”. Which is basically the outline for the ACA.
Honestly, this is a picture of the document, you can download it yourself:
So why now are conservatives howling with outrage? How did they go from supporting the creation of a market-based health care system to shutting down the government?
It isn’t the policy they hate. It is the man. From the day he was elected conservatives (and even before the election in 2008), they vowed to undermine and obstruct everything.
Why?
Republicans were not afraid this President was going to fail, they were terrified he was going to be successful.
This was their worst nightmare. A few years of economic recovery followed by growth and including health care reform? Do you know what that adds up to in conservative math?
Absolute repudiation of trickle-down, voodoo, “small government, less tax” economic policy.
And now it is all happening. The economy is finally recovering. Democrats have had to fight for every inch of growth and recovery. But they did it. They had to battle to pass every piece of legislation, but they did it.
So what do conservatives do? Do they accept the fact that they lost? Do they respect the Constitutional validity of the ACA as decided by United States Supreme Court and vow to work with our President to secure and strengthen our recovery? Do they stop for one minute and remember, the Affordable Care Act was their idea to start with?
Nope, not even a glimmer of any of that….
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