Back in 2010, as the House and Senate were marking up what would become the final version of Obamacare, America got a clear view of its future. In both chambers the process defined anyone’s idea of hell, far worse than watching paint dry because paint doesn’t act like an overindulged six-year old from start to finish.
Over and over, hours into days, GOP lawmakers offered one poison pill amendment after another, each with no chance of being adopted by the majority. But it wasn’t enough to simply put the amendment up – coupled with a speech for Sean Hannity and the base back home – for rejection; Republicans would then demand a hideously tedious roll call vote. Nihilist kabuki became part and parcel of every step in the slog toward national healthcare; it was literally a battle of who could disagree more.
Central to the GOP narrative was Obamacare’s reliance on an individual mandate (IM) which would levy a tax, or fine depending on point of view, on individuals refusing to obtain health insurance. It hardly mattered the individual mandate was actually Nixonian in its origins, and found its first national sponsor in 1989 when the Heritage Foundation put it out as an alternative to the Clinton Administration’s doomed push for a single-payer system.
Nor did it matter the modest obligation was simpatico with conservative sensibilities toward ballooning costs associated with extended care for that percentage of “free riders” selfish enough to refuse purchasing coverage come what may. Roger Ailes and Mitch McConnell, both publicly committed to making Obama’s a one-term Presidency, had their main talking point and they would run with it. Fox/AM went to work, attacking the udders of our increasingly shrill argument culture with the aim of milking it for every last drop. The war on Obamacare would fully reflect just how unhinged messaging could become within the vortex of Glenn Beck and GOP show horses from gerrymandered districts, terrain capable of prompting only primary threats from the right.
Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, despite his stature and seniority, made it clear from the start GOP stalwarts would follow rather than lead on the issue. Although he favored the individual mandate when it was an alternative to single-payer, Hatch did his best Patrick Henry, declaring “…the difference between regulating and requiring is liberty.” From O’Reilly to Rush, Levin to Malkin, the Fox/AM brigade became ceaseless in trying to one up each other as to the calamity the IM portended.
Steadily the IM went from the poster child of liberal dependence on unnecessary regulation to a certain harbinger of totalitarianism. A $695 annual penalty, levied on those with the means to purchase health insurance, but stubbornly ignorant enough to refuse to do so, became a GOP synonym for end times. Instead of free riding deadbeats prepared to cost the system thousands if misfortune came their way, those refusing to take advantage of insurance they previously could not access were proud patriots, modern day tea tax rebels. By November they would have their own “grass roots” movement that would make Democrats pay dearly for their unconscionable efforts to insure more Americans.
By the time Obama signed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law in March of 2010, 39 blue dog House Democrats were already preparing talk tracks about why they joined every Republican and voted against Obamacare. The Tea Party wave that November spared few of them. And what of the GOP? After their first taste of just how easy it was to throw all semblance of truth and decorum to the curb, simply making stuff up as they went, Republican back benchers were euphoric. Unlike moderates who valued governance and felt the need for several showers, the nihilists knew a winner when they saw one. Why had they waited so long?!
Near ten years later the GOP strategy and behavior for executing it are one and the same, the product of an epiphany the battle against national health insurance provided. The crux of the matter, which they were just comprehending back in 2010, is straightforward as it is depraved: that the national interest pales in the shadow of power, and the sky’s the limit when visceral white grievance melds with a multi billion dollar, multi-platform messaging system. The only difference now is there exists not a one in the GOP caucus of either chamber who loses a moment’s sleep over such standard procedure requirements.
What was a Faustian bargain with grievous moral and ethical consequences for members to consider back in 2010, is now a central part of the Republican autonomic nervous system, as natural as breathing. Those lawmakers with moral reservations about the Pandora’s Box they helped to open back when they warned constituents about “death panels” are long gone, replaced by a political class liberation of its contents enabled and nourished. That spawn has been on full display recently in a House Longworth Building hearing room.
The Republican Party has devolved apace as one might have expected it to after its hysterics during the Obamacare debate. That a majority of Americans now have a favorable view of the program, and thousands owe their lives to its inception, hasn’t stopped the GOP from tossing all manner of pasta against the wall in an effort to kill it. Yet and still, once they succeeded in ending the IM along with the passage of a massive tax giveaway to big business and the upper brackets, the appetite for false and reckless rhetoric about Obamacare diminished. Now it’s ceaselessly employed to protect Donald Trump’s rabid political survival.
Back in 2010 Republicans discovered the political advantages of ignoring established signposts of shamelessness. Now, as a united authoritarian party with no daylight between their leadership and the rank and file, the GOP has upped the ante and are enthused to disregard established taboos about sedition while protecting Trump. GOP nihilists now peg impeachment as an existential threat to their wretched core supporters, who need precious little persuading, but will still get it 24/7 for good measure, just as they did a decade ago. Same sorry game, but much higher stakes. A contest we can’t afford to lose against opponents who cheat to win. BC
Stark. Frightening in the extreme.