The Party of No Sympathy

Over these last few weeks while Congress has been in recess, we've seen some pretty offensive town hall meetings. Birthers and deathers, seniors who rail against a government run health care option but freak at the idea of possible changes to steamline their government run Medicare, and gun-toting 2nd Amendment activists who for some reason show up armed at health care forums have shown us the ugly, misinformed and disinformed underbelly of the Republican voter, uneducated in the ways of the current health care reform battle among many other things.

But lately, we are becoming witness to the lowest of the low. We are watching our elected officials at said town halls cater to the basest fears of their far right wingnut base and turn their backs on constituents coming to them for answers, constituents in need, people looking for help.

The first of these examples came from Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the heartless representing the heartland, when a distraught woman pleaded for help because her husband's insurance company would not cover his traumatic brain injury. Coburn's response? Call his office, but "government is not the answer." He suggested she should look to friends and neighbors as the sheeple in the audience applauded. I wonder how many of them offered to help this woman and her husband after the meeting was over?

Then came word of Kansas Republican Rep. Lynn "Great White Hope" Jenkins laughing in the face of a young mother with a 2½ year old child who can't afford health insurance when she asked what was wrong with a government run option that she could afford? Here is someone who doesn't want to be on the dole, would rather pay for her own insurance than get subsidized by the government to buy private insurance, and she is basically ignored... as the sheeple again applaud.

But I must say that the latest act of RNC Chairman Michael Steele is disgustingly reprehensible. Steele has shown over and over that in his mind, he is right and anyone who disagrees with him is a moron. It's the Emporer's New Clothes Redux. He knows not of what he speaks and proves it every time he opens his mouth. Well, this time, he not only shows his ignorance but his pompous ruthlessness as well.

Taking a question about health care reform from a student who lost her mother to cancer because she couldn't afford some of the medications, Steele took it all as a big stunt and said, "It makes for great TV. You'll probably make it tonight, enjoy it." He then turned his back on her... and the white sheeple who were bussed in and sat in the front rows of the prodominently black audience applauded.

I mean, I always thought Steele was a bit of a douchebag, but man, that is some cold-blooded shit. What is the point of having a town hall meeting when you don't care what the participants have to say? How does he justify that kind of behavior, not just as a human being, but as a representative, THE representative of the Republican National Committee? Come on, Mike, at least pretend to care. All you're doing is solidifying the notion that the GOP really doesn't give a rat's ass about the average American barely scraping by. He's just as insensitive as he is stupid.

Dave Zirin writes:

...The roots of Steele's unconscionable behavior lie in his own political bankruptcy. The nation faces a health care crisis and has no answer other than telling students, "Everyone in the country needs health care." Lately he has been running commercials telling seniors, "No cuts for Medicare," just two short years after running for senator of Maryland saying that "everything has to be on the table" - including Medicare cuts. As Ron Brownstein wrote in National Journal on Friday, "Steele's pledge this week to 'protect Medicare' might have been more convincing had it not come five months after nearly four-fifths of House Republicans voted to literally end the program as we know it for all Americans younger than 55."

It's one thing to be a fraud. That's politics as usual. But to turn your back on a young person whose mother just died of cancer is more than politics as usual. It's shocking.

UPDATE (10:30pm): Keith Olbermann gives Steele the once over.

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