What It's Really All About

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Sen. Jim DeMint



It is not really about health care reform. It never has been. If the current health care reform bills had been presented by the Republicans in Congress instead of the Democrats, conservative Republicans would have greeted them enthusiastically. Everybody knows that we need health care reform. Everybody knows that the cost of health insurance is soaring out of reach for most people and businesses. Everybody knows that millions of people cannot get health insurance because of prior conditions, current conditions, or inability to pay. No, it’s not health care reform that has conservatives up in arms.

There are other issues that motivate the anger of right-wing conservatives against President Obama’s health care reform. Those people are fanatical about issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, gay rights, guns, and immigration. I am also convinced that for many of those people the issue is the President’s race. To them it is simply unbelievable that a biracial individual has taken-over in the White House. They read news stories saying that by 2042 white people will be a minority in the United States, and it makes them crazy. They don’t seem to realize that they do not have to wait until 2042. They already are a small minority.

The stone-cold businessmen who run the health insurance companies do not care about these issues. They just want to keep-on making billions of dollars by soaking the public. They are in a survival mode. It reminds me of the movie “The China Syndrome” where ordinary businessmen were willing to do anything, even kill, to keep people from revealing the facts about their malfeasance. I believe that the insurance companies are willing to do anything, ethical or unethical, legal or illegal, to destroy health care reform.

One thing they are willing and happy to do is tap into the ugly mood and anger of right-wingers against President Obama and the Democrats. Aside from the spreading of lies in all available media about the bills in Congress, they are organizing and paying for demonstrations against congressmen who favor reform.

Now that federal lawmakers are home for their summer recess, right-wing opponents are disrupting town-hall meetings about the health care reform. Screaming protesters have turned normally respectful meetings between representatives and their constituents into unruly scenes of chaos and violence. These demonstrations are not spontaneous. They are not grassroots. Democratic leaders have described them as “Astroturf”--the opposite of real grass. They have been carefully organized by health insurance companies and far-right organizations. People outside the congressional districts are being brought-in to demonstrate. Those demonstrators have no idea what is in the health care bills. They know only that they hate President Obama.

A strategy memo circulated by the Web site “Tea Party Patriots” instructed demonstrators to “Pack the hall” and “Yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.” “Get him off his prepared script and agenda.” The memo continued: “Stand up and shout and sit right back down.”

Congressmen have been receiving hundreds of calls demanding town-hall meetings on the health care proposal. They are becoming wary of such meetings because they now realize that the callers want to show-up and disrupt. A North Carolina congressman who supports health care reform had his life threatened by a caller upset that he was not holding a public forum on the proposal.

President Obama has said that this is not about him. This is about reforming the health care system. But for Senator DeMint and other right-wing extremists it is all about the President. They care nothing about health care. They want only to hobble this President and his party which have reduced them to a small, squealing minority.