An American Lion

Blog Post at Fire Dog Lake Dot Com Incorporated

Here’s Miss Hamsher’s post:

I’ve been talking to a lot of people in Arkansas recently, and they all say that Blanche Lincoln traded her vote on health care for her chairmanship of the Ag Committee. So, what’s with her carrot-clutching theatrics on the Senate floor? Well, it only makes sense if she — like her Blue Dog friends in the House — were assured that there would never be a public option in the final bill. That’s why the Thursday Night Massacre took everyone by surprise. Reid decided to save his own ass with a piece of kabuki that violated that deal.

But now Reid has to deliver in order to move the legislation. But first, he and his handlers decided to give an extra bit of cheap hustle by running ads asking you if YOU have done enough for the public option, and list build off of it. Knowing that he never intended to do shit. You’re a chump, you see. You’re really fucking stupid. Ha ha! Cots in the Senate! Oh, my sides.

There’s one born every minute, and you’re it.

Right now, Harry Reid is doing what he always intended to do — take the public option out of the bill. You’re just the last to know.

Hard to imagine a major right wing blogger saying that about Bill Frist or Trent Lott or Bob Dole, but still. That’s a hearty “f-word” and a solid money-raising challenge to the Majority Leader of the United States Senate being mounted by a die-hard liberal activist. Somebody done somebody wrong, and that’s the song they’re signing about it. Wow.

The liberal base is justifiably angry, and I’m still casting around for a better way to express how shocked I am that there is any fear of the Republican super-minority. Here it is, a year and a month past the 2008 election, which was a mandate for real, substantive change, how betrayed and angry the liberal base that elected President Obama (and carried him through the primaries) really seems to be having been jilted at the altar.