Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
Spot-on:

I see absolutely no [Republican] strategy to deal with what everyone agrees is a deeply dysfunctional and grotesquely inefficient healthcare system. I see no viable way to bring down the long-term debt, because such a goal can only be achieved in our system with compromises from both parties, and the GOP is offering nothing the Democrats want. That’s why this is such a serious crisis, because the key driver of it has no real idea what it wants to do except destroy a re-elected president. [...]

This crisis has almost nothing to do with actual policy – as you can see from a base Republican’s rational support for a single-payer healthcare system and willingness to get Obamacare insurance. There is nothing to the current Republican strategy but blind, irrational hatred for a re-elected president: “I don’t like him, and I don’t feel comfortable with anything he’s got to do with.” Somehow, this “feeling” must be granted some “relief”, or they will bring down the world economy.
For some it may be blind, irrational hatred of the President. Such yahoos are out there.

For the bulk of the Tea Party crowd and their fellow travelers, it is more a question of fear than of hate. They truly believe that the ACA is not simply a means of improving healthcare coverage but a stepping stone to national health care; that it is the continuation of America's transformation from a republic of individual states to a federal monolith. They view this as their chance to stop another Medicare or Welfare before it can take root and make itself another "3rd rail." And they fear such a transformation just as they loathe those elements: Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, that have already been enacted.

Why such a sense of fear over a program intended to promote a better society for all persons? Because they see the future as a disaster waiting to happen when the social safety net becomes unsupportable. Try a read of some of Christopher Nuttall's work if you don't believe people can think about it that way. I assure you, quite a number do.

Me? I am not so sure. I don't sit around wondering if Obama is really seeking to create an American version of Stalin's Soviet Russia. I am certain he is not. I do not believe there is some grand plan to "rule them all and in the darkness bind them." Outside of sword and sorcery fiction, it comes off a bit cheesy. But I do have doubts about the economic supportability of a program of government trending towards the enforcement of "equality of outcome" rather than of opportunity.