Taking the Globes Off

The ugliness of the Bomber Joe McCarthy era, the early 1950s in the US, is being revived yet again by the Republican party. In their fight to make sure the poor stay poor, the Republicans are pulling every ugly political trick they can, using the big lie technique, and mustering their stooges as a kind of brownshirt bully mob.

Here is an article in the Washington Post by Steven Pearlstein that takes off the gloves:

Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform

As a columnist who regularly dishes out sharp criticism, I try not to question the motives of people with whom I don't agree. Today, I'm going to step over that line.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress -- I've made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation.

...

By now, you've probably also heard that health reform will cost taxpayers at least a trillion dollars. Another lie.

First of all, that's not a trillion every year, as most people assume -- it's a trillion over 10 years, which is the silly way that people in Washington talk about federal budgets. On an annual basis, that translates to about $140 billion, when things are up and running.

Even that, however, grossly overstates the net cost to the government of providing universal coverage. Other parts of the reform plan would result in offsetting savings for Medicare: reductions in unnecessary subsidies to private insurers, in annual increases in payments rates for doctors and in payments to hospitals for providing free care to the uninsured. The net increase in government spending for health care would likely be about $100 billion a year, a one-time increase equal to less than 1 percent of a national income that grows at an average rate of 2.5 percent every year.

The Republican lies about the economics of health reform are also heavily laced with hypocrisy.

While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers -- the only two ways I can think of to credibly bring health spending under control.

...

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

Go read the whole article. He lays it all out. All the lying and cynical manipulation. It is ugly.

Back in 2008 I thought the American people had taken a turn toward better politics and had repudiated the "spin" and manipulation of the Republicans under Bush and with his dirty tricks specialist, Karl Rove. But I see that the Republicans are back and it is as if nobody has noticed.

Sadly most Americans don't remember the "manufactured crowds" in Florida that blocked the counting of the butterfly ballots and helped force the election into the Supreme Court where politics overrode "judicial discretion" and allowed right wing judges to put their man -- Bush -- into office and override the Florida judicial system. The Republicans are up to the same tricks again and people are not connecting the dots.