To which The Gadfly's immediate reaction would be . . .
Yes - because if it is anything that Americans have been pining for in a presidential candidate is a guy who compared gay marriage to child rape and animal sex, a guy who said that the Affordable Care Act was the worst thing to happen to America since slavery, a guy who said that women who are passionate about defending their own reproductive rights need to be "re-educated," and a guy who believes that men and dinosaurs simultaneously co-inhabited the earth which was created just 6,000 years ago.
All of those statements dear readers, are on the public record and documented. Oh sure - Carson, when confronted with his own words, as most duplicitous conservatives do, tried to walk back some of those idiotic statements, but the video and audio tapes do not lie. Those are the man's actual views, he owns them and there isn't a goddamn thing he can do or say to pretend that it isn't so.
Then, just this past week, Carson went on Fox "News" to mouth off about the real-world crisis going on at the Veteran's Administration and this is what he had to say:
“I think what’s happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider,” Carson said, making the now common equivalency between the VA and the Affordable Care Act. “And if we can’t get it right, with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world with are you going to do it with the entire population?”http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ben-carson-whats-happening-with-the-veterans-is-a-gift-from-god/
[ The Gadfly's eyesight stabilizes after repeatedly slamming his forehead on his desk ] . . . . First off, anyone who can nonchalantly characterize the suffering that our veterans are experiencing due to an inadequate and under-funded health care system as a "gift from God," has got some disturbingly serious, underlying psychological issues going on.
Secondly, Carson, like a good little conservative parrot, appears to have learned his new Fox "News" talking points quite well -- namely the conflating of the Veteran's Administration health care system with Obamacare (the ACA).
The Gadfly has already posted about this, but in the interest of brevity, the simple, irrefutable fact is that the VA system, in it's entirety, is wholly owned by and operated by the federal government. The ACA, on the other hand, is simply a government program, ala Medicare, which facilitates and builds upon public access to the PRIVATE SECTOR health care system. Apples -- meet Oranges. Carson is not stupid - he knows the difference, but would rather appeal to the lizard brain Fox viewers instead of being honest about it.
What puzzles The Gadfly more than anything is this though --- if the conservatives are truly and sincerely interested in reconciling with and reaching out to the African American electoral community, who in the last few major national elections have voted en-masse against the GOP by an incredible 9 to 1 margin --- of all of the qualified conservative African American Republicans out there (and there are actually some out there), why go with the guy with the most ass-backward, hateful, nihilistic views? No - really. How in the fuck is promoting a candidate who is spouting the nonsense that the Affordable Care Act is worse than the human slavery as experienced by African Americans in the first century of this nation's history, a benefit to their movement's minority outreach efforts as well as their electoral prospects?
It truly does paint a damning picture of just how far removed from reality that the conservative movement, and by proxy, the modern day Republican party has become. They really haven't a clue as to just how toxic and obnoxious and unappealing that their ideological message is to, not just African Americans, but also to Latino and increasingly other minority voting blocs. And the longer they keep fucking around and snubbing their noses at those minorities, the closer their movement edges toward the abyss of irrelevancy, for the simple fact is that minorities are the fastest growing bloc of voters and to ignore their interests, and actually just snub your noses at them and treat them like shit, is basically the equivalent of a slow motion suicide of your political movement.
But hey -- don't ask The Gadfly to intervene -- for he really does not give a rat's ass if the GOP wants to slit it's own political throat to appease the Teabagging neanderthals in their base. In fact, The Gadfly will gladly sharpen their blade for them and mop up the blood mess left behind once the deed is done if it's all just the same to them.
----TFG
No comments:
Post a Comment