Why are they acting like this? Why did, to paraphrase the President, one faction of one party of one house of one branch of the government shut down that government over one already-established law?
Here’s the best explanation I’ve found so far. There’s the small-government issue and there’s the funding of right-wing politicians via the uber-rich Koch Brothers, whose dad co-founded the John Birch Society and now with the help of Citizens United call the shots behind the scenes with all the corruption that engenders. (If they wanted employers to fund insurance or employees to just go buy it themselves, they and the Waltons and the like who run a goodly percentage of the economy should have paid them enough to be able to do so. And the health insurers should never have been allowed by Republican governors twenty years ago to change to for-profit status and throw tens of millions per year at their CEOs instead of patient care, and, business profits or no, should never have been allowed to turn applicants away.)
But the big point the writer makes is that when so many of the working poor no longer have to live in dire fear of being one medical emergency away from total catastrophe, it may be that they’ll start to vote their gratitude and relief and away from the party that, certainly in the Southern states, many of them belong to now.
The House is certainly making it a stark choice.
Speaking about how this is all going to play out for the Cruz types is an op-ed by a former Senator who was considered one of the most right-wing in his day. I didn’t always agree with his politics but I love him dearly. Go Uncle Bob–you tell’em.