It is deeply depressing to watch conservatives and Republicans try to bring down Obama's health care initiatives. Not because the whole utopian Rube Goldberg contraption shouldn't go up in flames, mind you. No, my dismay with the current assault on Obamacare has to do with the quality of the arguments against it, and what those arguments say about the condition of conservatism in particular, and the American electorate in general.
Conservatives and Republicans are trying to bring down the various Democratic congressional proposals by invoking spurious straw men such as mandatory euthanasia, abortion, and bankrolling illegal immigrants. The Right is laying siege to congressional town hall meetings, where mobs of the Tea Party and pitchfork ilk repeat these lame and shrill morsels of fearmongering.
There's a much, much simpler argument to be made against this mess Obama calls health care reform, or universal health care, or universal health insurance, or whatever...
THERE IS NO MONEY FOR THIS!!!...NONE!!!...WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS!!!...
The federal budget deficit for 2009 will be more than 2 trillion dollars. Let that sink in for a minute. On top of that 2 trillion, Obama wants to create a brand-new entitlement program in the middle of an especially nasty recession that is estimated to cost a trillion dollars over ten years (take that estimate and multiply it by a number between five and ten, and you'll be in the ballpark of actual cost). Every sale of U.S. Treasury securities is already a cliffhanger! Do we really think the bond market won't buckle under the weight of all this additional long-term debt?
But why isn't that argument being made instead of all the other silly nonsense that makes conservatives and the GOP look like X-Files rejects?
Because it wouldn't work. Nobody cares about the cost of things. Nobody really cares about the national debt, or a sudden, steep spike in long-term interest rates that would make the stagflation of the 1970s look like a trip to Six Flags.
Until they do...Until something makes them care...
