The Pocono PC Doctor

Ramming And Scoring

by digby

Walter Shapiro at Politics Daily makes an interesting observation about Obama and Bush and it pertains to something that’s driving me nuts in the current health care debate: this sanctimonious lecturing by Republicans about how the Democrats are illegitimately “ramming health care reform down the people’s throats.” Like Shapiro, whenever I hear the Republicans lugubriously wax on about the president and the Democrats acting against the will of the people, I can’t help but think back to the early days of the Bush administration when the man who had been installed by a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court was rolling over the 50-50 Senate as if he’d won a landside.

Shapiro writes:
In short, Republicans like Graham are insisting that the majority-elected Obama must temper his ambitions because of fluctuating and ambiguous polls about health care. So what if Obama’s approval rating has never fallen below 47 percent in the daily Gallup tracking polls. Contrast this with Bush in 2001, who took office with only 51 percent of the American people in a CBS poll believing that he was elected legitimately. But because Bush was (wait for it) a “conviction politician,” he was entitled to pursue his expansive and expensive (in budget terms) agenda starting with massive tax cuts. As Rove writes with almost an audible sneer in his words that the Democrats “were surprised that he didn’t come to them on bended knee.”

He makes the case that if such a thing exists, Obama is a “conviction politician” as well for pursuing HCR, although I’m not sure that phrase accurately applies to either of these politicians. I don’t know exactly what makes either one tick, but convictions don’t jump to mind as the likeliest motivations.

But the contrast between how the Repubicans portrayed their right — no, duty — to enact Bush’s agenda regardless of a mandate or public opinion and their endless allusions to a weeping America forced to submit to a tyrannical Democratic majority (intent upon giving them access to health insurance) is stark. And it’s the kind of hypocrisy that’s making the country stupid.

…South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham begged the Democrats, “Please don’t do this…I’ll work with you to find a smaller bill that the American people feel more comfortable about. Let’s do a field goal on health care. Let’s [don't] score a touchdown by ramming it down somebody’s throat.”
Keep in mind that this is not only someone who fully supported President Bush after a dubious election result all the way to the point where he was 28% in the polls, but he was also one of the House managers who impeached a popular president in 1998 despite the fact that the country had just repudiated their jihad at the polls. What can you say to this level of intellectual dishonesty?

PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS APPLAUD REP. DONNA EDWARDS FOR FILING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BILL TO OVERTURN US SUPREME COURT RULING ON CORPORATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS

HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIR JOHN CONYERS, JR JOINS FILING

“Free Speech Rights Are For People, Not Corporations”

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland introduced today a constitutional amendment bill to overturn the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing unlimited corporate money in elections. Congressman John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is a co-sponsor of the amendment bill.

A coalition of public interest organizations and independent business advocates praised the Congresswoman’s action. The groups, Voter Action, Public Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance, say the Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC poses a serious and direct threat to democracy. Immediately following the Court’s ruling on January 21, 2010, the groups launched a constitutional amendment campaign at http://www.freespeechforpeople.org to correct the judiciary’s creation of corporate rights under the First Amendment over the past three decades.

“Free speech rights are for people, not corporations,” says John Bonifaz, Voter Action’s legal director and the director of http://www.freespeechforpeople.org. “Our history has included prior amendments to the US Constitution which were enacted to correct egregiously wrong decisions of the US Supreme Court directly impacting the democratic process. The Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC demands a similar constitutional amendment response. We applaud Congresswoman Edwards and Congressman Conyers for taking this critical step toward restoring the First Amendment to its original purpose.”