The Stench of Repug Desperation

How determined is Mitch McConnell to stop health care reform? So determined that he ordered republican party elder Bob Dole to stop supporting it.

John Amato at Crooks and Liars calls our attention to an article in Saturday's Courier-Journal.

Bob Dole was told to keep his trap shut by non other than the odious Mitch McConnell, the man who has as an approval rating as low as Dick Cheney's.

The GOP’s 1996 candidate for president said he was asked by current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., not to issue a bipartisan statement calling for passage of health care reform legislation.

“We’re already hearing from some high-ranking Republicans that we shouldn’t do that — that’s helping the president,” Dole said. He later specified that the people he referred to included one “very prominent Republican, who happens to be the Republican leader of the Senate,” according to The Kansas City Star .Dole was also quoted as saying that partisanship by his own GOP was behind the delay in reaching agreement on a final health care bill.

I don't expect Dole to suddenly go on the air and rip into his party, but the fact that this much got out says a lot. The republicans have no plan for health care reform so any words that come from older republicans on the hot topic carries a sting to it.

Read the whole thing.

No one deplores the lack of Democratic Party discipline more loudly and profanely than I do, but this story is a stark reminder of the free speech difference between the parties: Democrats value and tolerate dissent, even to our detriment.