A Diary in the Community Spotlight asks whether Republicans' overblown reaction to the Congressional Budget Office's prediction that the ACA will end the "tyranny of 'job lock'" means they're either stupid or liars. E.J. Dionne cuts through the Republican bullshit and suggests they are, in fact, both:
The reaction to the CBO study is an example of how willfully stupid — there’s no other word — the debate over Obamacare has become. Opponents don’t look to a painstaking analysis for enlightenment. They twist its findings and turn them into dishonest slogans. Too often, the media go along by highlighting the study’s political impact rather than focusing on what it actually says. My bet is that citizens are smarter than this. They will ignore the noise and judge Obamacare by how it works.
The depths of sheer cynicism the Republican Party will stoop to maintain its own political survival are nearly boundless. To appreciate those depths, it's useful to step back and remember what a political party
is. It's an organization that through persuasion or force seeks to impose its policies and values on the whole of the public. Implicitly, it is supposed to offer the public a
viable option for competent governance. To fulfill that task it is supposed to produce candidates with
viable policy proposals.
At least that is what you would expect. That is what political parties are supposed to do. That is why they claim to be able to govern, create and administer our nation's laws.
There was a time when the Republicans actually took that responsibility seriously. The last major Republican initiative that was actually, tangibly geared towards improving the quality of Americans' lives was the creation of Medicare Part D, the "Prescription Drug" program, which, at least on its face, was supposed to augment Lyndon B. Johnson's Medicare program, now a fixture of American life. The gaping flaws of that effort have since been revealed, particularly as the legislation deliberately denied the Federal Government the right to negotiate drug prices. But as bad as it was, it was at least an effort to respond to the needs of American citizens. It is literally the only notable Republican legislative accomplishment of the entire 8-year Bush Administration.
Since then, the Republican Party has neither offered nor provided anything of benefit to ordinary Americans. The emptiness of their legislative record speaks for itself. Instead, they have provided ideology. They have basically traded their responsibility to the public for ideological phantoms. And, as Dionne points out, they can't even live up to their own rhetoric:
Many on the right love family values until they are taken seriously enough to involve giving parents/workers more control over their lives.
The "debate" about the health care law's effect on employment comes down to one thing--individual freedom. For the Party that espouses the "right-to-work," this should be a no-brainer:
One of the best arguments for health-insurance reform is that our traditional employer-based system often locked people into jobs they wanted to leave but couldn’t because they feared they wouldn’t be able to get affordable coverage elsewhere.
This worry was pronounced for people with preexisting conditions, but it was not limited to them. Consider families with young children in which one parent would like to get out of the formal labor market for a while to take care of the kids. In the old system, the choices of such couples were constrained if only one of the two received employer-provided family coverage.
Or ponder the fate of a 64-year-old with a condition that leaves her in great pain. She has the savings to retire but can’t exercise this option until she is eligible for Medicare. Is it a good thing to force her to stay in her job? Is it bad to open her job to someone else?
Republicans want to deny Americans the option of leaving jobs they've clung to out of desperation? Republicans want fewer stay-at-home Moms? They want to deny Americans their right to decide their own fate? If this is the way Republicans really feel, Americans might start to realize that all of the GOP's ideological, anti-government claptrap about "freedom" is merely masking something deeper and hidden. There is no greater "freedom" than the freedom to control your own survival. If the Republicans aren't for that, then what are they for?
Real working Americans understand, even if the GOP doesn't, that in yet another year without a raise, following on the heels of the worst economic calamity since the Depression, ideology doesn't pay their medical bills. They look around at their children, look to the future, look at their parents, and they see what's left of the safety net, falling away in shreds. They want their politicians to deal with those issues, not politicians who are "stupid on purpose."
The truth is that Republicans have stopped being a political party at all, and there is no better illustration of this than their reaction to a CBO report that shows the ACA will allow workers more freedom. If there were any legitimacy to their ideology, they'd be championing the effects of the ACA. But their reaction proves that they are simply a PR arm of corporate America, and their sole job is to spout ideology in furtherance of corporate interests.