Democrats should "go it alone"

After back-pedalling on "the public option", the Democrats tried veering away toward "health co-ops", supposedly to see if Republicans were really interested in compromise.

As I've said many times before: no, they aren't.

The Republicans are trying to damage Obama and his party, not trying to solve America's healthcare issues. The fact that they were willing to tell overt lies about proposed healthcare reform, such as cynically calling end-of-life counselling "death panels," shows that there is no depth to which they will not sink in order to achieve in the media what they could not achieve in the ballot box.

The current incarnation of the Republican party is hopeless. Sen. Charles Grassley recently announced that he would vote against healthcare provisions which he himself thought worthwhile in order to foster party unity. Here, party unity means kow-towing to the conservative wing represented by the religious right, the gun lobby, and big-business groups like The Club for Growth. (Don't think the Republicans are for "the little businessman": they favor large and powerful corporations at every opportunity in everything from anti-trust legislation to copyright and patent policies.) The reason for making obeisance to these fringies is that they represent about all that is dependably "Republican" these days. The party that opposed Social Security, child labor laws and Medicare, and pushed deregulation of everything, is now completely out of touch with the vast majority of Americans. All it can do is tell lies, lies, and more lies.

As I've said, Obama and the Democrats must unite and totally marginalize the bankrupt G.O.P. I suggest that they go on the attack and use the media to itemize every single untruth the Party of Big Business has been hawking. They should make it clear that the citizens of every other advanced country have better and cheaper healthcare, and that they are happy about it. They should use some of the film clip resources of The Daily Show, which so amply demonstrate the two-faced nature of their opponents. If they blow this because of their usual cowardice and/or naivete, then we might as well invite Sarah Palin to take over.