Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Orrin Hatch Is Onto Them

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is on to them. He’s figured out that healthcare reform will actually work and that Americans will like it and they will repay the Democrats by keeping them in office.

And if they get there, of course, you’re going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody’s going to say, “All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party.”

And they must be stopped!

So the idea of giving the people what they want and making their lives better is a bad thing? It’s a threat to democracy if the government actually works? Right.

Not to long ago, of course, we had a president and his political adviser whose stated goal was to provide us with a “permanent Republican majority.” He would do it by making sure that the American people were constantly reminded that government was bad and we must always be fighting against its nefarious attempts to do things for us, like protect us against unscrupulous bankers or keep our air and water clean or provide for good schools and civil rights and all those things that Democrats want us to have, because if we had them, we’d all be happy and keep on voting for the nice people who got them for us. That’s not America, though; America is always fighting against things like that because it makes us soft, and we’re not soft; we’re a nation of go-getters…especially if you’ve already got it.

Mr. Hatch isn’t the first one to discover the real danger for Republicans in actually letting the people have what they want. Back in 1993 when President Clinton was trying to pass healthcare reform, William Kristol said it would be a disaster for the GOP for basically the same reason: it would be wildly popular and America would thank the Democrats by electing them again. That was it; no other real reason was necessary. What that means is that for Mr. Hatch, the worst thing in the world would be for Americans to be happy and healthy.