Repeal and Save Face

EDIT: I went ahead and submitted this to the Daily Show forum as a story idea. If you watch the Daily Show and you're interested in commenting on this strip as a story idea, you can follow up on their forum here.

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I've thought of a half-dozen different ways to start these artists comments, so... here goes nothing.

I want to be known for my humor, not my politics... And these political cartoons are very challenging for me because I truly dislike all the spin and the yelling in our public discourse and the last thing I want is to get caught up in it and be part of that problem. So why do I post any political comics at all?

I feel like I have a responsibility to make them... I don't talk to people about politics in person often, in part because when I do people don't let me finish a thought -- they change the subject and try to dominate the conversation to avoid being seen as contributing to a party that's made mistakes. And what's so wrong with making a mistake?! You know, mistakes can be corrected! But only if you admit them.

Anyway, because I don't talk about politics in person, I probably wouldn't talk about politics at all if not in my art. So when I hear that a majority of senior citizens still believe the spin that the newly passed health-care bill includes "death panels" set up to kill them all, I think it would be irresponsible of me to sit back and say nothing and let people be taken advantage of this way.

I'm independent, but I do tend to agree with the Democrats more often when I see debates - and I can and do readily admit that the democrats make a lot of mistakes. They're not organized enough, most of them aren't great public speakers, they're flat wrong when they say guns cause violence (they don't seem to have that effect in Canada), etc. Each party has its problems, but they have very different problems. The biggest problem the Republicans have right now (and one they can absolutely correct) is groupthink. I've mentioned this before. Their 2nd biggest problem is hypocrisy, but they won't be able to solve that problem or any other problem until they solve the groupthink problem.

I want the Republicans to solve their problems... I want their party to be competent and strong again... So does David Frum, who's not only been a republican his entire adult life, but has been an important Republican with many bonafides (he was a freaking speechwriter for Bush!) until he recently dared to pose the ideas in this comic. He was fired from the conservative think-tank the American Enterprise Institute for saying precisely what I'm saying here. Well... part of it. He stopped at "we should have contributed instead of trying to prevent the Democrats from doing anything". Apparently that rather astute observation and useful criticism was too much for the Republicans. At least it was too much for the head of AEI, but none of the other Republican senators seem to have taken much notice of Frum's comments since then either.

What's being shown in this comic however is the very real schism forming between the Rush Republicans and the general public. Regardless of what you've heard about the Tea Party wanting smaller government and lower taxes, the reality is that's NOT what we, the voting public, really want. We want politicians who compromise to get things done! Left right and center, the public (80%) want bipartisan efforts to get things done to improve our economy, our health-care, our schools, etc. And just today I'm hearing Republicans complaining about a lack of bipartisanship on the part of the Democrats. Don't let them fool you -- everything in this comic is 100% accurate. The republicans fled their own health-care reform bill in 1994 like rats leaving a sinking ship, a year after drafting it, because then president Clinton embraced it. Obama's administration drafted a new bill using 2 (count them TWO) republican plans and 1 bipartisan plan (and ZERO wholly democratic plans) as the boilerplate for the bill they passed. And now that it's passed, the Republicans have been banging the Repeal and Replace drum harder than ever, insisting that we double-back on THEIR OWN PLANS because they were passed by Democrats. The worst of it all being the claim that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, when it was promoted originally by a couple of different Republican senators. So either they promote laws they know to be unconstitutional, or they're full of shit and just being partisan douchebags focused on infighting instead of solving problems. I'm thinking the latter.

The moral of the story here is hypocrisy will only get you so far. Hypocrisy is annoying at the best of times -- but in the Senate, it's simply unacceptable. It's not what we, the public, want because it doesn't solve any of our problems. I'm not saying we need to get rid of the republicans. What I am saying is that the the Republicans can complain about being cock-blocked when they stop cock-blocking everyone else from getting things done and start helping solve problems.

(Oddly, despite his charm with the ladies, my mother is a Rush Republican.)