Urban Thought Collective

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is not stupid. He may be a political opportunist who is willing to pour the gasoline of misinformation onto the brushfire of paranoia, but he is not stupid.

Sen. Grassley knows that the health care reform proposals will not create government “death panels” that would force Americans to euthanize elderly and seriously ill loved ones. Grassley understands that the so-called “end-of-life provisions” simply allow patients to use Medicare to pay for voluntary meetings with their doctor to discuss options in case of a terminal illness. Grassley realizes that all this talk about the government forcing people to “pull the plug on grandma” has no basis in fact. But even though he knows all of that, Chuck Grassley used his influence as Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee to get the end-of-life provision deleted from its version of the health bill.

In announcing the committee’s decision last Thursday (August 13), Chuck Grassley basically admitted that there is nothing wrong with the intent of the legislation – he just feels it’s poorly worded. “We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly,” the Senator said.

So, Grassley killed the provision not because it was a bad idea (certainly not “evil” as Sarah Palin contends) but because somebody, somewhere, might some day be confused about how to carry out the law. Really? Well, if that was really the issue Grassley could have simply inserted some clarifying language into the Senate bill spelling out explicitly what the end-of-life provision allows and does not allow. But Grassley didn’t do that because he, like most conservative Republicans, is dedicated to defeating the health care overhaul at any cost – because doing so would mean defeating President Obama.

Conservatives and liberals have legitimate philosophical differences when it comes to a complex issue like health care. But differences in political points of view can hardly explain the hyperbole, rancor and belligerence that conservatives have been expressing over health care reform. People don’t shout folks down at town halls and throw around words like “evil,” “fascist” and “Nazi” because they disagree politically. They do that when they’re enraged, in a panic and want to rile folks up.

So, the frenzy over health care isn’t really about health care at all. It’s about our President. Republican Party leaders fear Obama because of his broad and resilient personal popularity and because his agenda appeals to a large, diverse cross-section of Americans. Obama’s election was a denunciation of the GOP, its policies and conservative ideology in general. The Republicans have lost their control over American politics and they’re desperate to get it back. So desperate, in fact, that they will validate and openly encourage lies, paranoia, rage and racism in an effort to derail anything and everything that President Obama tries to accomplish.

But the GOP should be careful. Whenever they fire up the mob, they expose themselves as petty extremists. That tactic backfired during the Presidential campaign, it backfired when President Obama was pushing the stimulus package and I expect it will backfire in the health care battle.

Thanks for listening. I’m Cameron Turner and that’s my two cents.

THINK! IT AIN’T ILLEGAL…YET!

Cameron Turner is a Los Angeles-area native whose editorials, entertainment news features and audio documentaries have appeared on national radio networks, online and in print for over 20 years.