Short and to the point

Just a short note today, folks. I’m here because last night I heard Juan Williams take up the new Democratic meme that the problems of the former junior senator from Illinois’ signature legislation are the fault of Republican obstructionists in the Congress.  Furthermore, there are no Republican alternatives to that legislation and such ideas that do exist would only create more problems in the health insurance marketplace. 

This is interesting on any number of levels, or at least I think so; you may think otherwise.  First, a Democratically controlled Congress passed this monstrosity without a single Republican voting for it, that the Democratic leadership in the Congress went out of their way to cut the Republicans out of the legislative process entirely, and that this same leadership systematically ignored Republican alternatives to some of the more gimcrack ideas that later became law.  As a result, the Democrats are stuck with this law in a way they no longer find congenial and are casting about for someone else to blame.  Second, the idea that the Republican alternatives like health savings accounts and permitting the interstate sale of health insurance would cause more problems than currently exist in the market is an interesting one, given that the current problems in the health insurance market are entirely of the Democrats’ own making.  People making this argument remind me of a man who has managed to set his neighbor’s house on fire arguing with that neighbor that he should not call the fire department to put out the fire because the neighbor hasn’t given enough thought to how he’s going to rebuild.   Stupid is as stupid does, as the incredibly wise Mr. Gump said, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when the house is on fire, you (or the fire department) put the fire out first.  But I suppose that reasoning’s too simple for the smartest people in the room.