Admit it. We're experiencing some schadenfreude as we watch the Republican party lose its footing even as its own constituents seem bent on pulling it further into the gutter. How about those Tea Partiers in Columbus who taunted a man suffering from Parkinson's?
The GOP has a lot to answer for.
In Washington on Saturday, opponents of the health care legislation spit on a black congressman and shouted racial slurs at two others, including John Lewis, one of the great heroes of the civil rights movement. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was taunted because he is gay.
At some point, we have to decide as a country that we just can’t have this: We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress ...
It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. ...Bob Herbert
Some Republicans are pulling back in dismay.
David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization, said Republicans had tried to defeat the bill to undermine Mr. Obama politically, but in the process had given up a chance of influencing a huge bill. Mr. Frum said his party’s stance sowed doubts with the public about its ideas and leadership credentials, and ultimately failed in a way that expanded Mr. Obama’s power.
“The political imperative crowded out the policy imperative,” Mr. Frum said. “And the Republicans have now lost both.”
“Politically, I get the ‘let’s trip up the other side, make them fail’ strategy,” he said. “But what’s more important, to win extra seats or to shape the most important piece of social legislation since the 1960s? It was a go-for-all-the-marbles approach. Unless they produced an absolute failure for Mr. Obama, there wasn’t going to be any political benefit.”...NYT
The Tea Party does not intend to pull back.
... They see this defeat as triggering a broader call to action. They're moving the health care fight to individual states, urging them to try to opt out of the overhaul or challenge its provisions in court. They're also expanding campaigns against incumbent lawmakers who face November elections across the country.
"Health care is just the tip of the spear," said Mark Skoda of the Memphis Tea Party. He helped organize a recent "Take the Town Halls to Washington" effort, in which activists tried to kill the overhaul or at least delay the voting until after Congress' spring recess.
Tea partiers are planning April 15 tax protests — a given, considering that their movement began in opposition to taxes and President Barack Obama's economic policies.
They also anticipate protests in coming months against other legislation favored by Obama and Democratic congressional leaders that the activists consider an affront to their concept of the proper role of government, from cap-and-trade environmental policy to any immigration bill that offers amnesty or relaxes penalties for illegal immigrants. ...McClatchy
