Gut Check for Wire Hanger

From Capitol News Connection, regarding recalcitrant "no" votes on health care reform:

“There’s nothing they could offer me,” says Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky. “It’d have to be a fairly strong, wholesale change in the bill.”

Really, Ben? What exactly is your problem with the bill?

Can't be abortion - you're publicly pro-choice, and pro-choicers are (reluctantly) in favor of the bill. Or even if you've become anti-choice given your vote for the despicable Stupak amendment last fall, the anti-choicers, including many deeply anti-choice Catholic representatives, are also voting for the bill. Either way, you can't defend a vote against the bill based on abortion.

Can't be cost - the bill is completely paid for, unlike the medicare part d trillion-dollar travesty your buddies the repugs rammed through in 2003.

Can't be the deficit - this bill not only reduces the deficit, it is the single largest deficit reduction of any legislation since Reagan raised taxes. And you are, of course, a proud "fiscal conservative," aren't you? You have to LOVE the deficit reduction in this bill.

Can't be the lack of a public option - you oppose anything remotely resembling a public option.

Could it possibly be that the bill actually extends availabiliy of affordable health insurance to 32 million Americans, including thousands of your own constituents?

Do you really hate your own constituents that much, that you don't want them to have affordable health insurance, or get insurance despite pre-existing conditions, or keep insurance despite getting expensively sick, or be able to extend their insurance to their children in college, or escape from the prescription drug donut hole or have any of the other literally life-saving advantages this extremely imperfect bill still offers?

Wait - I know: you think the trillions in tax dollars this bill turns over to the insurance companies is not enough. That's it, isn't it? They're threatening to withhold the campaign contributions that are the only thing standing between you and humiliating defeat in November unless you vote against a bill that doesn't give them quadrillions in tax dollars.

No, it's really none of those. It's simply this: You're a coward. A handful of ignorant racists make empty threats if you go along with anything that muslin nigger who stole the white house wants, and you fold like a used condom.

Instead of surrendering to ignorance and hate, why not try a little education? You'll never persuade the racists, but you don't have to - they haven't swung an election since 1968. There's a ton of already poll-tested soundbites out there for you to use, a massive throng of religious, conservative and health-care organizations and groups supporting the bill to give you cover. (Seriously: the AMA and AARP? It doesn't get any more mainstream conservative than that.)

Stand up and tell us the real reason why you're voting against a bill that has everything you claim to support, or just admit you're blindly obeying orders from Big Insurance.

But don't insult us by lying through your teeth about "a fairly strong, wholesale change" in the bill.

Because the only "wholesale change" you're going to see is in your employment prospects come November.