A New Litmus Test?
by Mike on Mar.24, 2010, under Political
It’s been thought that a politician’s stand on the matter of abortion was the litmus test on whether they are a true conservative or not. I think we have a new litmus test:
Are you for Repeal of the health care bill or not?
As I was drowning my disappointment in passage of the health care bill in some heavy metal, I was reminded of the words of that noted Canadian philosopher Neil Peart:
“You don’t get something for nothing.
You can’t have freedom for free.
You won’t get wise with the sleep still in your eyes,
no matter what your dream may be.”
I think this puts the whole health care debate in context and provides us our marching orders. The Democrats have promised us that health care costs nothing. In fact, it will save us $138 Billion over the next 10 years and $1.2 Trillion over the next 20 years! This is BS of the highest order. In order to achieve these numbers, congress has resorted to financial gimmickry that would cause a private sector CFO/Controller (such as myself) to be thrown in jail, including, counting 10 years of taxes and 6 years of benefits, assuming a $500M reduction in Medicare costs by “elimination of waste, fraud and abuse”, having the “doctor fix” pushed into another bill so it is not counted as the cost of this bill. That doesn’t count the impact of all the additional taxes, which clearly have a cost to the people paying them.
Neil is correct – we can’t have freedom for free. This bill is going to deprive Americans of our freedom (to decide whether we need or want to pay for health insurance, to pick and choose the health care features we want, to choose the doctors we want, etc.) so we must fight for our freedom. The only way to achieve this is to repeal the health care bill. The bill is such a monstrosity, it can not be fixed – THE ONLY WAY TO FIX IT IS TO REPEAL IT!
Hence, the new conservative litmus test – Are you for Repeal of the health care bill or not?
We can not afford to put forth candidates who think they can negotiate with the Dems on this matter. Candidates of this ilk brought us the Kennedy-McCain Amnesty Plan which was soundly defeated by the voice of the American public, and the Gang of 14, which organized themselves in order to avoid the constitutional crisis certain to develop from the Republican use of the “Nuclear Option” to free up judicial nominees held hostage by the Democratic filibuster. (Do those guys look really stupid now?)
Barack Obama and the Democratic congress have played their cards and shown they are on a take no prisoners march to implement their radical leftist agenda, bi-partisanship and the will of the American people be damned. These people can not be reasoned with. They must be confronted, fought and stopped in their tracks.
We need to wake up to political reality: The only way to do this is to elect conservative senators and representatives in 2010 and 2012 and a conservative president in 2012. That probably means some RINOs are going to have to go as well as a lot of Democrats.
Hence the new conservative litmus test- Are you for Repeal of the health care bill or not?
