Ever since Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his vice presidential pick, Republicans have been falling all over themselves trying to prove that they are more pro-Medicare than Democrats.
In fact, the new mantra is that Romney and Ryan are the saviors of Medicare, and that it is the Obama administration that is the Big Bad Wolf at the door trying to take away granny's health coverage. Saving a form of socialized medicine? Free-market capitalists of the world, where have you gone?
Even down-ballot candidates are joining in the Repubs' new-found celebration of and appreciation for Medicare:
http://www.salon.com/...
In the days since the Ryan pick, some GOP candidates have already tried to distance themselves from Ryan’s plan. “Linda McMahon will never support a budget that cuts Medicare,” said a spokesperson for the Connecticut Republican Senate candidate when asked about the Ryan budget, for example.
How did this come to pass? After all, conservatives profess to hate socialized medicine with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns, and they clam the rest of America does as well. Shouldn't they be true to their convictions and call for the end of Medicare, as the Ryan plan itself does, instead of now hightailing-it away from that plan and engaging in a finger-pointing game of "he's a bigger threat to Medicare than I am"? If they're so sure they're right, shouldn't they be willing to go to the American public, decry Medicare as the socialist system it is and watch as the socialism-hating Americans fall in behind them on the march to some private-market utopia?
If not, can't we finally just conclude that Americans love socialized medicine and get on with it?