An open letter to President Obama and the Democrats in both houses.
Dear Democrats,
It's nice that you want to play bipartisanism, it really is. But the people you are trying to play with, they are never going to play with you. These are not your father's conservatives. These are not reasonable people. Ever since Newt Gingrich led his gang of yahoos into Washington, the right wing of the Republican Party (and the right wing is pretty much all that is left of the party in DC) sees every issue as a take-no-prisoners, winner-take-all deathmatch. They will never compromise with you.
You see, they have convinced themselves that they are on the side of good, and anyone who disagrees with them is neccessarilly on the side of evil. And there is no in-between. See, conservatives in general tend to see everything in stark black and white, good and evil, us-vs-them terms. And these extreme right wingers naturally take that to the extreme. So if you put forth a bill that included free blow jobs for all Republican Senators, they would still vote against it. They would rather lose the vote then be seen as accommodating or compromising with the forces of evil.
Let me give you an example. Are you familiar with Dede Scozzafava? She is a Republican running for Congress from New York State. According to her local paper, "Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava has introduced a number of bills to the State Assembly that would enact harsher penalties for criminals, fill holes in the justice system, and help keep repeat offenders off the streets." So, she's a good ol' fashioned tough-on-crime Republican, right? But apparently on some social issues she differs with the hard right, like she doesn't really hate the gay people. Now, according to Politico.com, "many conservative groups are rallying behind Doug Hoffman, a third-party candidate running on the Conservative Party line, even though their support for him might pave the way for a Democratic takeover of the seat recently vacated by GOP Rep. John McHugh."
That's right, they would rather lose the seat to the democrats than support a Republican who is less than ideologically pure. “She’s not even a moderate. She is a radical, ultraleftist who has an ‘R’ next to her name,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, chairwoman of Susan B. Anthony List, an organization that backs female candidates who oppose abortion and has endorsed Hoffman.
Okay, so if they think that a fellow Republican is a "radical ultra-leftist" because she disagrees on a few issues, that should tell you a bit about where these nuts are coming from.
The good news is, you don't need them. Democrats have the majority in both houses, including a filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate, along with a Democratic president. You can pass whatever you want. You could pass a law making it illegal for kittens to be adorable, and there's nothing they could do (although you'd have a hard time enforcing that one!) So pass a fucking health care bill. And make a strong public option the centerpiece of the legislation. They're going to scream and wail and call it communism and fascism and socialism and Satanism and everything else under the sun, but you know what? They're going to do that anyway, no matter what you do. And they don't matter.
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