How many floggings does it take to expect the Spanish Inquisition?

[phantom power]

I have my doubts about the ability to shame the modern conservatives. After all, they weren't too upset to see people cheering and shouting "yeah!" at a presidential debate when Wolf Blitzer asked if Ron Paul's plan was to "let them die." But what the hell, maybe they still have a shred of decency about this sort of thing that can be activated.

But I am not letting the Democrats and the president off the hook so easily. Health care reform was in the works for decades. Universality was always the assumed goal of comprehensive health care reform until the political decision was made to make it about cost. That wasn't done on the fly, it was a conscious choice to back away from the moral argument in favor of a technocratic financial argument. At no time did they even try to pass real universal health care.

Now, I understand why they did it. The Republicans, after all, had been going along with a privatized health care solution based on those technocratic reasons until the day the Democrats looked like they might actually pass it. But without the moral argument, there was just not much to hold thing thing together, once the conservatives went their way (as anyone should have expected.)

...

The ACA was, even when fully implemented, not guaranteed universal health care (which is why I was always so irritated with the ecstatic victory dances implying it was.)There are many ways to get there, but what we should care about is that it is simple,seamless, universal and can't be taken away. That is, after all, what we believe in, right?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/qotd-will-wilkinson.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. It's become harder to claim that nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition

because now we sort of do. Their main weapon is fear. Fear and surprise. And a fanatical devotion to Grover Norquist.

No comfy chair for us.

[phantom power]

2. fanatical devotion to Grover Norquist