An American Lion

Senator Lamar Alexander is still a poor excuse for a thinker and a politician:

On “Face the Nation”Sunday, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that Democrats poised to push through the health care reform bill with a 51-vote majority in the next several days are on a “kamikaze mission,” and are heading for a “political wipeout” in the upcoming November elections.

“No big piece of social legislation has been jammed through by a partisan vote,” Alexander told “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer. “Johnson had Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — all had 70 votes.”

It’s understandable that Alexander and the Republican Party aren’t happy with the Democratic bill and hope they can at least gain a political advantage if they can’t stop the president from signing it into law. 

What’s isn’t comprehensible is Alexander’s comment comparing President Obama’s quest to offer health insurance to 30 million more Americans, at an outsized cost of $1 trillion, with the Watergate years of President Nixon. 

“Through elections, through town meetings, through consistent public opinion surveys, Americans have said ‘Don’t pass this bill.’ And this is the most brazen act of political arrogance that I can remember since the Watergate years. Not in terms of breaking the law but in terms of thumbing your nose at the American people and saying ‘We know you don’t want it, we’re going to give it to you anyway,” Alexander said.

No, the American people want to see the health care issues fixed, but they don’t want to educate themselves as to what that entails and they have not become vested enough in it to counter the mad ravings of the minority of individuals who have shown up at town hall meetings to screech about what they think the legislation will or won’t do. It hasn’t been a case of informed commentary; it’s been about paid advocacy against legislation no one understands. The Democrat Party failed to use the mandate given to President Obama to make quick structural changes to the system in rapid fashion, which would have offset the ability of the insurance corporations to buy opposition to the changes. The failure of the Republican Party has been manifested in obstructionism, and, to a smaller degree, in the idiotic statements of Senator Alexander.

You don’t reference Watergate unless you actually are talking about breaking the law; when you try to compare reformist legislation with Watergate, you look like a fool, sir.

It’s no skin off my nose. The American people won’t get good government until they learn what that is and begin insisting on it on a daily basis. Until then, lesser men can pound all the sand they want. I shall sit back and marvel at a world where common sense, and the basic needs of a small businessman, are ignored in favor or lobbyists and hospital administrators.