Share this one with your Fox-News-watching elderly relatives. Dana Milbank on “Mediscare, Republican Style“:
Are Republicans ready to be trusted with the reins of power?
__
If you’re thinking of answering this in the affirmative, you might want to pause long enough to learn what transpired on the third floor of the Capitol on Thursday. There, four prominent Republican lawmakers announced their proposal to abolish Medicare — “sunset” was their pseudo-verb — even for those currently on the program or nearing retirement.
__
In Medicare’s place would be a private plan that would raise the eligibility age and shift trillions of dollars worth of health-care coverage from the government to the elderly. “This will be the new Medicare,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the proposal’s author, announced.
__
For years, Republicans have insisted that they would not end Medicare as we know it and that any changes to the program would not affect those in or near retirement. In the span of 20 minutes Thursday, they jettisoned both promises….
__
Don’t expect Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell or John Boehner to take up the cry; the party leadership isn’t about to line up for abolishing the popular entitlement program. The real question is whether party leaders would be able to repel this conservative movement to end Medicare if Republicans gain control of the White House and Congress, where conservatives already dominate the GOP caucuses.
__
But DeMint and his colleagues think the time to end Medicare is now — with a cold-turkey conversion to a private program, effective in 2014. “I think if Americans actually find out the truth about what we’re doing, it will be a very big positive for Republicans in the fall,” DeMint forecast…
Someone needs to explain to Jim DeMinted the old proverb about “doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results”…
Villago Delenda Est
This is political suicide.
Why are they doing it? Are they actually insane?
Wait…don’t answer that…it’s rhetorical.
I think.
Tonal Crow
Politifact will say this is pants-on-fire lying in 5…4…3…. Also too both sides do it and “imminent debt crisis!!!!!!”
scav
So far I’ve heard from robocall rombot trying to fill a gymnasium out in the surburbs with people in Chicago that can see the lake and gotten to yell down the line at a poorly designed and blatant push-poll and keep it connected for as long as possible as it tried so parse fuck and then you into yes/no/repeat for every question. Trying very hard to be content with small transient joys today.
sharl
Politifact rates the Dick Whisperer‘s claim as 86.2493% untrue.
ETA: curses! beaten by Tonal Crow
dmsilev
Wait about 8 months, and *then* explain it to him.
Thx.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So much for the Romney-Rand theory of Paul watching.
scav
@dmsilev: If he’s not picked it up by now, I think we could tattoo it backwards on his forehead, lock him in a carnival funhouse hall of mirrors tonight with a cell-phone and he’d still not make the call until long after Nov.
jl
I suggest people call DeMint and beg him to do it, and do it big, so everyone can hear.
Earlier today I was on the phone with one of the principal teabagger instigators in my family re family financial business. Family Teabagger in Chief started to turning the conversation to national politics and I tried to avoid it. I usually try to unless it is a topic where I think I can play a constructive role (eg, we both hate electronic voting).
But, I heard a true diatribe against Santorum, Gingrich and Romney. He hates their fricken guts. A racist religious fanatic nutcase, a slimey DC insider trying to pass himself off as something else, and a lying Wall Streeter. Says he won’t vote in November, which is unimaginable to me, and I said so, I suggested he write in Ron Paul, which I think there is a good chance he will do.
Fortunately, none to the teabaggers in my family are into the racism (otherwise, I would not be able to deal with them at all). Teabagger in chief knows enough “ol’ gals” around his town who need “them damn birth control pills” for various medical reasons, and he hates him those damn bishops and oily fundy preachermen.
Poor guy feels lost. The Dems are pathetic loser do gooders who will destroy the country with their crazy do gooder schemes, and the GOP has gone nuts, according to him.
I could not find any words of comfort. I guess I will think of something constructive to say later, or maybe not.
Edit: and forgot to say that all the teabaggers in my family are just old enough to be on the edge of being grandfathered into some new Social Security or Medicare scheme, or are on it and look to be around for another ten years or so. Their thinking visibly turned as the implications of the GOP ideas on social insurance soaked through their heads. To some extent, I fancy, due to my very patient and overly neutral recitations of home truths about these programs to them over the years. But maybe I am flattering myself.
BerkeleyMom
WTF is the matter with these people? My husband went on Medicare last June and it was the best thing to happen to our family. The thought of my 82 year old Dad getting private insurance terrifies me. I guess you need to be making $20 million a year to be able to afford the Repubs new plan. Hey, Romney’s doing it!
geg6
Rand Paul, Senator Aqua Buddha himself, wrote this turd of a bill? And DeMented wants to shove it through during election season? Bring it on, motherfuckers. We’ll get ourselves FDR-sized majorities in both houses AND take the White House on a cakewalk. Oh, please do this, Aqua Buddha!
Jewish Steel
What a gift!
I don’t know if the lord loves me or Barney Frank much, but those Rs in congress sure do.
dmsilev
@scav: Well, that’s certainly worth a try. If nothing else, there’d be some quality video out of the exercise.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
It is the republican’s perennial problem, the long journey from the Demented faction of super wingnut, now southernized for effect, to the rest of the party currently clinging by it’s fingernails to planet earth. Without another Dear Leader to submit to, the distance gets further and further.
It should be that no voter would take them seriously for holding power, but this is America, and tribal loyalty runs deep. Often right up to the edge of the abyss.
Some pundit on Fox News will opine that calls to end medicare by republicans are a Soro’s run commie op to smear republicans, and not to worry wingnut seniors, liberal lies are everywhere and Fox truth will set you free.
Dems will benefit from repeated full frontal attacks on the sacred cows of SS and medicare, but not near as much as they should.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BerkeleyMom: I’ll never get it. Actually I do, most people don’t write checks for their health insurance, so they have no idea how much it costs. I pay for my own, and my premiums have sky-rocketed over the last few years. Every time I hear these people babbling about “government” getting between them and their doctor, I think, but your okay with a for-profit corporation being there?
Danny
Oops, I think Mr Milbank just earned himself four Pinnochios. It might be the truth, but it lacks a certain… balance.
Mino
I can’t figgure out Graham. Sop to wingnuts and sure widespread electoral defeat? Maybe he’s trying to save the country and himself in one move.
Davis X. Machina
They’re all in.
Do you want to get rid of the ni**er bad enough to give up Medicare?
Will you die for the tribe?
It’s not a rational offer, or an explicit one. But it’s compelling theatrically.
Jager
I’ve had some of the most expensive private health insurance from gold plated to platinum and none of them were as good as Medicare coupled with Kaiser Permanente Senior Advantage, not even fucking close. A old college pal is a hospital administrator and he loves medicare,why? Because it pays the bill on time. Unlike the private plans who wait 90-120 days or more and bitch about everything so they can keep from paying the bill for even longer. These guys are nuts, if they think this will fly.
grandpa john
4 fucking idiot liars and 2 of them are mine. pray for me whether you believe in it or not. Lindsey is scared shitless that he is going to be primaried by the teabaggers here so that probably explains why his brain has turned to shit.
Demint has no excuse he was born insane and stupid.
My wifes fondest dream is to win a good sized lottery, buy a island somewhere in the tropics and move the whole family, children, grandchildren all, out of this hellhole of ignorance and evil called South Carolina
jl
@Davis X. Machina:
Well, looks like the chief teabagger in my family sez no, from the way he talked this morning. On other hand, as I said, he is not into the race baiting side of teabaggerism.
I forgot to add that I heard more sincere concern expressed that perhaps Palin would not fulfill her early promise of leadership potential. I had nothing at all to say to that. Had to concentrate on not laughing.
Amir Khalid
They are quite, quite mad, these senators from your country’s Republican party. To go by Dana Milbank’s story, they know exactly what is wrong with their plan, and they insist that that is what makes it a good plan. It is time for them to retire to a quiet, restful home with mattresses on the walls.
jl
Anne Laurie:
” The real question is whether party leaders would be able to repel this conservative movement to end Medicare if Republicans gain control of the White House and Congress, where conservatives already dominate the GOP caucuses. ”
For me, an interesting question is whether after they introduce this insanity (I hope I hope, please do it), this turns into a platform fight at the GOP convention.
Usually no one cares much about what is in the platform. But a high profile fuss at the convention, right before the election over an insane and unpopular policy that can be tagged with the label’Medicare (as we know it) sunset’ would be a delight to watch.
Fluke bucket
About 3 times a month Newsmax tells me that Rand Paul says that Obama just banned one million more rifles. Rand is chin deep in all the really important stuff
grandpa john
@Mino: @Mino:
Just himself the country doesn’t matter to him. He is scared shitless, there is talk from the teabaggers of primiarying him and there is already one of the nuts announced that he is running against him, so that helps explain his even harder turn to right wing insanity.
Rafer Janders
Sometimes I think they WANT to lose….
Suffern ACE
Meh. I think the purpose of this plan is to get the dems to respond with an alternative plan that will be equally unpopular.
scav
They can’t really run on their accomplishments over the last legislative session so these are the quick BS written overnight on no-doz papers they’re turning in minutes before class deadline. Polish it up as a “Brave Plan to Save Taxpayers Millions” for the campaign literature and hope the Prof+TAs-et al won’t have time to read the actual things in the final rush of grading.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe mad, maybe not, but certainly ignorant. By the time you get to be a DeMint or a Graham or Orrin Hatch, it’s been so long since you’ve actually bought anything with your own money or taken care of any administrative tasks for yourself that you really have no idea whatsoever how much anything costs or how anything really works for anyone who doesn’t have a flunky to do it for them. Since everything is so friction-free for them and for everyone they know, it must be the same way for everyone.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Romney’s already on record as endorsing the Ryan plan, not that you’d know it from the political reportage.
Davis X. Machina
@Suffern ACE: Because the deficit squishes and tax-o-phobes have a working majority inside the larger Democratic caucus, there will be no shortage of people willing to oblige.
The Republic of Stupidity
Oh Hell no…
Don’t ‘splain a damned thing to these idjits…
Just get a cold beer, some chips… a little salsa…
And let the hijinx and hilarity ensue…
patrick II
I have a sixty-two year old friend with a pre-existing condition. Her husband was forced to retire early, so they were on Cobra for six months, but had to leave and buy their own insurance. Their health insurance costs $30,000 a year.
People generally don’t talk about both broad republican health care goals at the same time — end Medicare and repeal Obamacare. Without Obamacare there is no law against companies turning down patients with pre-existing conditions. If there is neither Obamacare or Medicare, then what insurance company would take on a 65-year-old with a pre-existing condition for anywhere near the amount of a voucher payment?
Unless you have a mandate of course, which they consider unconstitutional.
So, in the end, Alan Grayson correctly stated the essence of the G.O.P. healthcare plan.
dmsilev
Re: the GOP race, this little item from TPM brought a smile to my face:
Can’t we all just wait for the convention? It’ll be hilarious.
James E. Powell
@Suffern ACE:
Right. And I’m sure Steny Hoyer & Friends are working on a draft of the plan as we speak.
bemused
@Gin & Tonic:
I think it was here that I read this in a comment and have shared with everyone I can think of:
Ignorance is a condition, stupidity is a commitment.
Our heinous republicans are certainly committed whether it is to pigheaded stupidity or overwhelming greed or a proclivity to inflict intense pain on others. I vote for all of the above.
Mino
@Davis X. Machina: No shit! I watched Up this am with Ezra guesting and he said Karl Rove told him that the Blue Dogs had come to him and said they would be willing to privatized SS but Bush was too toxic. Now maybe this was ll- dimensional chess on Rove’s part but don’t be too sure. Nancy Smash saved SS, not Dem senators.
Southern Beale
Head of San Diego Tea Party was just arrested for kidnapping and raping a 56-y-o woman.
So that means at the next Tea Party rally we can all all yell “Be-HAAAVE yourselves!” and “Stop raping people!” repeatedly, ad nauseum?
dmsilev
Scenes from the Missouri GOP Caucuses:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dmsilev:
Oh Lord that’ll keep the Paulites riled up. Was it black, perchance?
Wow. That’s some serious nutty, there. It’s interesting to think of this woman, gleaning the term “Muslm Brotherhood” , probably from newsbreaks on the Glenn Beck Funtime Radio Show covering the Arab Spring, and processing it into…. what? An international conspiracy? Bill Ayers birth certificate forging operation?
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Gonna make sure I can watch some of the GOP convention this summer. Might be fun.
Southern Beale
I loved this part:
Still lying, of course.
Southern Beale
@dmsilev:
Yeah I feel so fucking sorry for Missouri Republicans. Oh, WAIT. No, I don’t. There is nothing nuttier than a Missouri Republican, except maybe a Kansas Republican. They’ve been flogging their crazy John Birch Society shit for 40 years and NOW one of their people worries that someone might inflict personal injury on them at a caucus? Boo fucking hoo. You’ve been stoking the crazy fires for a generation and now you fuckers REAP WHAT YOU SOW just like the rest of the nation.
Jay S
In better news the governor of Utah has just vetoed their “don’t say gay” and abstinence only education bill.
link
dmsilev
@jl: Yeah, me to. I’m hoping against hope for a serious of bloody floor fights and credential battles. And for it to end by Romney using the GOP equivalent of super-delegates to put him (barely) over the top in the midst of a near-riot from the Paul-ites.
scav
@Southern Beale: So, the nuts in chief think that assuring the nuts du base that the plan is in essence a DemonRat Zozialist Commie plan from 2004 is a selling point. I swear I don’t have alcohol in the house but I simply have to be +∞ for that to parse.
Egg Berry
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The fuck?
quannlace
They say reporters love a good horse race. They love a god-awful mess even more.
Peter
Sweet mother of god. It’s like Christmas.
rikyrah
this is who they are. doesn’t shock me.
Southern Beale
The Republican Party is in such a knot trying to out-conservative each other, it doesn’t know which way is up.
Remember, Kentucky is the state where two Republican Party officials got in a public fight, ending with one shouting “Moonie moonie moonie!” at the other.
And that was after the first guy had called him gay.
I mean, if that were an SNL sketch no one would believe it.
Svensker
@Egg Berry:
That’s pretty much it, isn’t it?
How much crazier do we think it’s going to get out there, exactly?
Cat Lady
Peak wingnut? If not, we can see it from here.
dmsilev
@Egg Berry: I think they believe this is a documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I’ve looked through the window of a padded room. That’s too good for these assholes. Cold, 8 in thick solid concrete, a 500 watt haligon area light, on continuously, a bucket to crap in, 5×8 feet with 15 ft ceiling. A year or 2 of that should be enough time.
FlyingToaster
@Cat Lady: No, no, it’s a mirage.
Peak Wingnut is one of those points you can only approach asymptotically. Every time you think you’ve reached it, it recedes into the mist.
Reading this mess (aloud) from my state-of-birth engendered a three-way facepalm (yes, WarriorGirl joined in). I’m going to have to do stock up on hard liquor; wine isn’t going to be enough for this hilarity.
FlyingToaster +0 (can’t start drinking until our yawning WarriorGirl goes to sleep)
Thymezone
These people are so fucking crazy that even after the total ass whipping they are going to take in November, they won’t quit until a wooden stake is driven through their empty chest cavities.
nepat
Republicans also have a long game, and this is it. Win or lose in November, they will keep on keepin on their “privatization” plan. 10, 20, 30 years. Doesn’t matter. These things are passed from one Repub generation to another. Bequeathed in wills. They never, ever give up.
Ruckus
@Thymezone:
Some of them have figured out how and reproduced. I don’t think a wooden stake will ever be enough.
Southern Beale
@Cat Lady:
I don’t think we’ll ever see Peak Wingnut. It’s like a Friedman Unit, some mythical time 6 months off into the future …
Southern Beale
@nepat:
This is very very very true. We must squash the beast that is privatization. Not sure how to do it but we must.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
So, now that they’ve alienated more than half the electorate (women), they’re giving up on their only sure thing, the over-65 demographic. Do you suppose they remember that after the Goldwater débacle, they came back and had a Republican or Republican-in-all-but-name in the White House for 36 of the next 44 years, and in their Cargo Cult mentality, they think they can bring on the same thing again?
David Koch
but, but, but Ron Paul is the only true progressive….
Mnemosyne (iTouch)
Mnemosyne (iTouch)
Which makes me wonder if this is some kind of attempt to make the presumptive GOP candidate look moderate for the general election: Obama wants to keep Medicare, right-wing Repubs want to abolish it, so Mitt’s plan to kill it is clearly the centrist position.
Maude
They are turning on each other, for joy.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FTFY.
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman:
It’s what some of them want to do that’s the problem…
Foregone Conclusion
In 1968, the Republicans pretty much overwhelmingly chose Nixon as the Goldilocks candidate – not the hated liberal Rockefeller, but more electable than Reagan. Nobody *liked* Nixon, but they picked him because he was the only conservative candidate who could beat the Democrat, and they were willing for him to just talk nothing but platitudes throughout the general to get their man in. And it worked out pretty well for them.
Are they smart enough to do that this time? On paper, yes, because they’re going for Romney rather than Santorum or Gingrich. But they’ve forced him to go so far right that he’s inevitably tarnished for the general. They haven’t got the discipline to win in a tough fight, and the Democrats have. Incredible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne (iTouch): I admit to my un-wonkishness, but I was looking for hard numbers on the Ryan plan, how they set the dollar or percentage value of the vouchers. Looks to me like they kept it vague to give it a better chance of getting traction?. The DeMint plan pays 75% to buy into the federal program. I’m not sure the Ryan plan sin’t worse than this one.
Egg Berry
@Foregone Conclusion: The difference being that the incumbent didn’t run in 1968.
Peter
I’m not in the slightest surprised that they want to do this, but I’m a little flabbergasted that they thought this was a winning idea in an election year.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Foregone Conclusion:
I’m not so sure. I think Romney’s reputation as a flip-flopper may actually help him with the know-nothings who call themselves independents. I’m assuming a tight race
Jay C
@jl:
“Crazy do-gooder schemes”? Like, oh, preserving Medicare and/or Social Security? Yes, I know that’s what Republicans have tried to characterize these programs as – ever since FDR and LBJ introduced them – but is that really going to fly with the public? Least of all, the public that actually uses them?
Southern Beale
Oh and also, this:
Right. That explains all of those Tea Partiers with signs that said “Keep government hands off my Medicare.”
priscianusjr
This is what happens when you add money people like the Koch Brothers to decisions like Citizens United. You get abundantly-financed nutcases who don’t know and don’t care what is good politics. Maybe losing a few elections might sober ’em up, but for the time being they’re living in a fool’s paradise.
Cargo
see, here’s the problem. Ever since I became politically aware, around 92, I would look at who and what the conservative side was espousing and would think “how could ANY reasonably smart person POSSIBLY think this is a good idea”
ANd here we are now, all thinking “yes, nominate Santorum, please, try and end Medicare, hello FDR style majorities, hello Goldwater ’64”
And yet something makes me think that yes, republicans are stupid enough to support this. Every wingnut of my acuqaintance hates Romney, hates Santorum, hates Gingrich, thinks the whole 2012 election is going to be a waste of time, certainly isn’t crazy about Obama (but, maybe it’s me, they always seem to be mad at him for the same reasons I am – not going far ENOUGH)
And yet, I know for a fact that in November, some 45% of the electorate will be like “my taxes are too high, democrats are going to ban guns, arglebargle” and vote for whatever lizard creature chews his way through this nomination process.
Every time it looks like the electorate will FINALLY see reason, that the contradictions have FINALLY been heightened enough, everyone doubles down.
I don’t know what to do anymore.
Foregone Conclusion
@efgoldman,
In those days, the press was present at pretty much every event on the campaign trail. And they were pretty good at picking up gaffes and reporting them in the newspaper. Just read some of the old editions of the New York Times from that election and look at how they dealt with George Wallace (and, for that matter, Humphrey). It was nearly as intense as today, because the press actually did their job.
Nixon was smart, because he was relentlessly on-message in public, to the point that journalists got bored with reporting his speeches because they were forever the same. Funnily enough, he engaged in practically none of the face-to-face retail politics that trips candidates up – small meetings where they’re asked questions which might actually cause them to embarass themselves. Nixon deliberately sealed himself away from all this for this reason. You can’t do that today, of course, and Nixon barely got away with it back then.
I would say that Humphrey was a quasi-incumbent, as much as Gore was in 2000, or Bush Senior in 1988. Humphrey trumpeted the positive achievements of the Kennedy-LBJ years, while Nixon tried to pin the negatives on him. On Vietnam, there was some divergence between LBJ and Humphrey, but not that much.
Ben Cisco
They are totally losing it. What is this, mid-March? They’ll be reduced to screeching and flinging their own poo by the convention.
__
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Tom Q
The difference between 1968 and 2012 is not just incumbency, or what the primaries did to the GOP candidate — it’s the circumstances. We Dems see LBJ’s ’65-’68 as years of accomplishment tainted by Vietnam, but for much of the country it was seeing society spin out of control: the Watts riots, the anti-war demonstrations, the rising crime rates all made middle America feel (and not entirely unjustifiably) that something had gone horribly wrong at the country’s core. (And, yes, the passage of the Civil Rights Bill cut about six states from the Dem coalition) The saving grace — what kept Humphrey close in the end — was a burgeoning economy, with an unemployment rate near the all-time low.
This year, it’s the reverse: only the lingering effects of the recession/meltdown keep Obama from being a wildly popular president…and the more the job situation improves in the coming months, the happier folks are going to be to re-elect him. The comparison is not Nixon ’68; it’s Mondale ’84 — another “inevitable” nominee who stumbled his way to what was a thankless nomination in the end because the incumbent would have beaten anyone.
AA+ Bonds
Hmm, and I remember when a bunch of liberals wanted to play nicey-nice over Rand Paul as he gathered rope to hang himself . . . this is what they mean by that blessed “consistency” of libertarians – they intend to destroy the state beginning with the parts that keep Americans alive and, well, here we are
Rick
Politifacct rated this claim as “mostly true”
AA+ Bonds
I hope at the very least all of you hope to shame the President for giving the fascists in the Democrats their “in” through Erskine Bowles, a vile serpent of a man who is as universally loathed in North Carolina as John Edwards
mdblanche
@dmsilev: You mean it’s not a documentary? I clicked on some of the other clips on there from Dr. Strangelove. On a video of the final scene somebody asked what movie it was from and somebody else answered “It isn’t a movie, it’s the GOP plan for 2012.” Got a few likes for that answer too.
SiubhanDuinne
Just looked closely at that cartoon. LoveLOVELOVE the little umbrella in McTurtle’s drink.
Joseph Nobles
@SiubhanDuinne: And where the little umbrella ends up…
Tonal Crow
@FlyingToaster:
To be pedantic, in asymptotic approach, you get monotonically closer to the goal, but your rate of progress also monotonically slows, so you reach the goal only at t=infinity. The second thing you described is the approach to a mirage, where the thing vanishes at a given point because you move out of the beam of refracted sky.
Jimbo316
@jl: Absolutely suicide, which is why it will never make the light of day at the Convention – at least as scheduled now. Of course, if the GOP convention ends up as a version of the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, well then, all bets are off. And that could happen this year despite the authoritarian nature of the GOP.
RareSanity
Wait, this was a Republican caucus, right?
It thought it was only brown people that would ever seek to do any God-fearing, hard-working, law-abiding, Republicans bodily harm.
Idiots…
Equs_personus
Yup, the convention could get lively. Hope they don’t bring guns.
slightly_peeved
So far, sounds like a lot of Republicans’ idea of a good night out.
Sammy
In spite of all of the thing republicans are trying to do that will harm the average person ther are millions of people who will continue to vote for them. I also keep heariong and areading about the independent voters who wilol vote for republicans in the next election.
Do these people not know what is going on? What am I missing.
Applejinx
It’s like the dotcoms or any other mass insanity- the meme is, “Yes, it’s insane, but there are so many stupid people that it will keep going forever!”
This is the core hubris of what’s going on and this Medicare privatisation is a perfect example. Nobody in charge can quite imagine that the whole concept of capitalisim and privatized everything will start to seem real suspicious to most people.
But people have seen what happens… and the trouble is, capitalism is only one possible economic behavior with its own virtues and vices, not really better than any of the others, just different.
Make its vices look awful enough- which is happening and has been for years- and you lose popular support. Privatising Medicare won’t play in Peoria because people will suspect that huge corporations will triple their premiums and then refuse to pay any claims, because THEY WILL if allowed to. So the argument of letting them do this because it’s good, doesn’t fly.
You just ask who benefits, and it’s the capitalist companies or those paid off by the capitalist companies. When it’s that obvious and that free of outside interference, it stinks. It’s easy to be in favor of capitalism and free market when it’s so heavily tempered by soc1alist government policies but when it’s stripped of moderating influences it’s hard to miss what it really is.
Just as, if you stripped soc1alism or communism of moderating influences, they look pretty shocking too…
bob h
DeMented and his Teabaggers are blamed for costing Republicans control of the Senate in 2010. This is in the same, self-destructive spirit.
EIGRP
@Fluke bucket:
Yeah, my neighbor thinks Obama is anti-gun and is going to take away everybody’s weapons in his second term. I pointed out that he had actually expanded gun rights (like the ability to carry them in national parks). He responded with “He’s just waiting for his 2nd term.”. Ugh.
Eric
Not Sure
@dmsilev: The exception is when little kids ask their parents repeatedly for something, hoping to wear them down a little at a time.