Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Why it was wrong for Pubs to nominate and elect DJT instead of an actual conservative - today's edition

The current Exhibit A is a doozy:

Here’s a transcript of what Trump said:
So we’re going to talk and we’re going to see what we can do. We’re getting very close. But, for the country, we have to have healthcare and it can’t be Obamacare which is melting down. The other side is saying all sorts of things before they even knew what the bill was. This will be great if we get it done and if we don’t get it done it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like and that’s ok and I understand that very well. But I think we have a chance to do something very very important for the public, very very important for the people of our country that we love.
It is like Trump learned how to talk about healthcare from his experience with the Miss Teen USA pageant. This sort of language is what students use to pad out an essay when they haven’t done the required reading. It’s embarrassing. It’s worse than President Obama mispronouncing “corpsman” or saying “57 states” in an exhausted stupor. This isn’t just a clumsily worded statement. It’s an admission that he has no vision whatsoever for America’s healthcare system and he’s delegated it to the woefully inadequate GOP leadership in congress.
Some will say this is taken out of context, but this sort of incoherent word salad is typical for Trump when discussing healthcare going all the way back to the campaign. He has no real opinion on perhaps the most important issue people sent him to Washington to deal with. He always speaks in vague generalities. Obamacare bad. Health care good. We’ll provide great health care. You’re going to love it. Trust me.

Since he has no idea why a free-market approach is the only alternative to the "A"CA and the single-payer arrangement that the "A"CA's collapse is going to lead to , he has no idea how to support and expand the core of Republican Senators who understand that. Instead, what his little pow-wow and the above blurt from it wind up doing is perpetuating the moral cowardice to which a great many other Senators are falling prey.

Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina or Bobby Jindal would have proceeded from an insistence on a free-market approach. Any of them would also have been proactive about conveying that - via television, social media, in-person appearances, all the venues Trump likes to use - to the American public, and would not have become mired in snits with dinosaur-media outlets.

We've been fair here at LITD. When developments for the good-move side of the ledger have occurred, they've been duly noted and applauded. But this is perhaps the biggest issue of all. It was one thing for Squirrel-Hair to rant (accurately) about the "A"CA's failure during the campaign season, but it's ringing a little hollow at this late date, since all he's doing about it is facilitating disarray.

And this is the juiciest opening the Freedom-Haters could ask for. They can make single payer look like the obvious way to proceed, since Pubs, even when political manna is served to them on a silver platter, don't seem to be able to hit their backsides with a yardstick.


5 comments:

  1. The obvious way to proceed is the way the people want to proceed. Not necessarily the way Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina or Bobby Jindal would have proceeded.

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  2. No, the way to proceed is complete repeal and none of this "replace" jive. Just let the free market do its thing.

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  3. I lost a lot of what respect I had for the people you named when they basically jumped on the Trump train.

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  4. There was one realistic alternative after the Pub convention, and that was a nightmare too grim to contemplate.

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