Should we expect anything less than a pimp-move with the race card from a politician that represents Sin City?
And they say that Republicans are the racists always playing the race card?
Amazing.
However, it’s certainly not as amazing as Senator Harry Reid’s (D-NV) comments comparing the health care resistance from Republicans and conservatives on Capitol Hill (namely, to the universal health care option) to prior legislative resistance to slavery years ago.
Such a statement from Reid shows a political willingness to paint such a complex issue (i.e., health care reform) into a corner where the sides are only black and white – not bad for the leader of a political party that has manipulated the social fabric every November with catcalls of racism and separatism against their opponents for the greedy purpose of gaining electoral victories with the hopes that a Rush Limbaugh comment here or there would seemingly valid their political poison. A decision to demonize opponents on such an important issue would only seem to promote the view that Reid, Pelosi, and others pushing this type of health care reform see this imitative more as a must-win political battle (to ‘keep hope – and change – alive’, to paraphrase two historical Democratic presidential candidates simultaneously) instead of a problem requiring the best and most comprehensive solutions possible regardless of political origin or affiliation.
Mr. Reid has instituted a “Nevada Compromise” – a move designed to compromise an increasingly-fragile nation’s psyche through throwing verbal bombshells intended to push folks into an ‘us-vs.them’ situation through some ‘winners take all’ dysfunctional and misguided prism that many congressional leaders are seeing the health care debate through. Although, it must be said – after witnessing the arm-twisting by Reid to get apprehensive senators to vote with Reid for cloture earlier in November, it is no surprise that the ‘hope and change in Washington’ that people voted for November 2008 was officially given a half-Nelson through brow-beating Nelson and others to get to 60 votes.
I’m sure that the Senate – and Nevada as well – is wondering if that is the type of focus from leadership we need on Capitol Hill as 2010 rolls in.
Health care reform is not a black-or-white issue as slavery was. Republican proposals to allow portability, encourage insurance competition, cover the poorest of our society (while pushing for lower costs for others), reevaluating regulations that skyrocket drug pricing, and disavowing the Democrats’ mandate for private health care coverage (at the risk of fees and penalties) represent the grey area that Reid and others hope that Americans forget about. Even conservative Democrats have issues with the proposals that Reid, Pelosi, and others have advocated, most notably the issue of government-issued abortions at-will (i.e., pro-choice abortions, not per-crisis abortions) in one of the few common ground items that both Democrats and Republicans have been able to find, much in contradiction to the terms of the chief conspirator of the Nevada Compromise. Rather than compromise a personal and political preference to get an American result, Reid would rather compromise America’s decency to expose raw emotion in an attempt to gain a political advantage with moderates and mino
