What’s the real reason for this shutdown?

Kevin Drum has it in one short sentence:

The Republican Party is bending its entire will, staking its very soul, fighting to its last breath, in service of a crusade to….

Make sure that the working poor don’t have access to affordable health care.

He goes on to say:

I just thought I’d mention that in plain language, since it seems to get lost in the fog fairly often. But that’s it. That’s what’s happening. They have been driven mad by the thought that rich people will see their taxes go up slightly in order to help non-rich people get decent access to medical care.

I have exceeded my blockquoting limit here, but I can’t say it any better or more succinctly than that. The Republican Party can’t stand the thought of its side paying taxes which might go to help people on the other side have a more decent life.

4 Comments

  1. It’s true, which makes it really, really sad. And my various relatives who have been bamboozled into supporting this really seem to think that they are protecting themselves from…something*. They can’t say exactly what, but it’s the worst possible thing.

    (*Resisting mention of “the thing in the woodshed,” because that would be making fun of people, when really, I just feel sorry for them.)

  2. The irony is that this could all be solved if corporations & big business were mandated to pay more reasonable wages, as they once did.

    And the even bigger irony is that an awful lot of people making VERY modest incomes, are also very afraid of the minimum wage being raised.

    It’s like we’ve become a culture of people afraid someone else is getting something more, or for free. And all that matters is getting more than someone else. Even if you’re starving, just having someone else be maimed is a win.

  3. “all that matters is getting more than someone else. ”

    Which is why a whole lot of poorly-educated white people in the South still vote Republican, because the Republicans tell them they’re much better than those black folks who live down the road from them.

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