As repugicans once again try to besmirch Obama's foreign
policy, they willfully ignored a week full of positive Obamacare news.
Is anyone surprised? …
As the old repugican saying goes, “No news is good
news. Except when there is actual good news, make sure no one hears
about it.”
It has been a tried and true formula ever since
President Barack Obama took office in 2009. Whenever any kind of good
news comes up, repugicans immediately either try to 1) disprove it, by
using either shoddy or fake statistics combined with anecdotes or 2)
immediately find something else to criticize, often times using the term
“scandal” in front of the issue even if the issue originated under the shrub junta. Like clockwork, repugicans have employed
this strategy and unfortunately for us, the mainstream media has
gobbled it up, ignoring any positive news and instead focusing on the
multiple wild goose chases that repugicans have led us on over the past
five and a half years.
This week, we saw a prime example of this strategy in action. The early part of the news week was dominated by the stunning defeat of Eric Cantor
in his repugican primary. Rather than admit that Cantor was seen as
one of the major reasons of the gridlock in Washington, wingnuts
immediately piled it on Cantor claiming he was out of touch with the cabal and that his views on immigration were out of line with those of
the people in Virginia’s 7th district. Never mind the fact that 72% of
the people in Cantor’s district actually support immigration reform,
this was the narrative that the wingnut media put out there for
all to see. The government shutdown, the multiple votes to defund the
Affordable Care Act, and the inability of the House to pass any
meaningful legislation had no effect on Cantor’s ousting. Yet his views
on immigration, those were clearly the straws that broke the camel’s
back.
While that news died down, much to repugicans
relief, it was another story that gave them a prime opportunity to
attack the President: The recent events in Iraq. As Iraq descends into
more and more sectarian violence and massive infighting, repugicans
have used the situation to paint President Obama as a weak leader with a
disastrous foreign policy. Chief among his critics has been war chickenhawk
John McCain who has yet to support any foreign policy issue that didn’t
automatically require American boots on the ground. This week, McCain
had the gall to suggest
that the Obama administration actually pulled defeat from the jaws of
victory by withdrawing troops in 2011 and that Obama’s entire national
security team should be fired. In John McCain’s fairytale world, the
only thing that ensures peace is having a forceful and massive military
presence in the country at all times.
Of course, John McCain and his repugican colleagues
will never be sending their own children to war so who better than them
to make policy decisions for the American soldiers and their families?
With repugicans on the offensive like that, you can
only imagine that there must be some kind of positive news that they
didn’t want the average American voter to hear about. And it just so
happens that that news came out in bunches
and happens to involve repugicans’ kryptonite: The Affordable Care
Act. We are only halfway into the month of June and yet repugicans have
already been given a hearty dose of heartache due to the ACA’s
successes this month. In separate reports that came out this week it was
revealed that in every state so far, more insurers are asking to participate in state exchanges, it was estimated that roughly 90% of ACA enrollees have paid their first month’s premium, the growth of Medicare was shown to be slowing, and of course the devastating news that 66% of Americans want to keep Obamacare.
All this positive news has gotten repugicans shaking in their boots.
So of course, rather than lick their wounds and cut
their losses they continue to attack the President. The repugicans know
that the Affordable Care Act will continue to be a huge political
success for the Obama Administration. Despite their constant
fear-mongering, lies, misinformation, and even a government shutdown,
the program has and will continue to help benefit some of the most
vulnerable in our society. It is a testament to the fact that government
programs can, and should, help everyday Americans in their struggles.
Like Social Security and Medicare, people will come to depend upon the
Affordable Care Act, especially as our country moves toward a
single-payer system.
The problem for repugicans is that they have an
entire political cabal who is on record as having not supported the
program. You can see it in the initial votes to enact the legislation.
You can see it in the repeated attempts to repeal the law. You can see
it in a presidential nominee running to abolish the program even though
it was his home state that gave a blueprint for the program in the first
place. The ACA is a Democratic victory. Every bit of good news is a
reflection of a determined President, his administration, and the
Democratic Party which needed every single one of its members to support
the legislation or else it would have not succeeded. The repugicans were
on the wrong side of history once again and rather than own their
mistake, they are insisting upon changing the subject in hopes that the
American people will forget all about the previous five and a half
years. And yet, for repugicans the truth will always be remembered by
the American people. They will ultimately be undone by this one simple
fact:
No matter how many times they change the subject, repugicans cannot change the past.
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