Until recently, I didn’t think that Chuck Grassley would have any difficulty getting reelected. The Democrats don’t have really high-profile contenders, and Grassley has a lot of seniority and remains fairly popular in Iowa. But I’m starting to wonder whether Grassley might be putting himself in jeopardy. As the Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, he provides the public face to Republican obstruction of Obama’s health care reform. If health care doesn’t get done, or if it has to be done through the budget reconciliation process because the Finance Committee can’t report out an acceptable bill, then Grassley is going to get a lot of blame for that. And he’s now joined the ranks of the Deathers. The Deathers are people who are spreading the rumor that the end-of-life counseling (i.e., advice on filling out a Living Will) in the health care proposals is the equivalent of the Federal Government performing euthanasia on you against your wishes. Sarah Palin repeated that inanity yesterday. Only a shrieking idiot would make such a claim, but apparently Grassley is now a shrieking idiot. Yesterday, he said this in a town-hall meeting:
“In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life,” Grassley said. “You have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before. Should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.”
He’s convinced Chairman Baucus to remove funding for end-of-life counseling from the Finance Committee bill.
The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those [other committees’] bills would pay physicians to “advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care.
“Maybe others can defend a bill like the Pelosi bill that leaves major issues open to interpretation, but I can’t,” Grassley added.
It’s open to interpretation that Iowa is land-locked, but that doesn’t mean anyone who thinks it sits on the Indian Ocean isn’t an ignorant fool. Sometimes when senators get old they start to lose their judgment. Even popular politicians can lose the support of the electorate if people can see that they’re slowing going nuts. Grassley should have an easy reelection but if he doesn’t stop acting like a jackass the people of Iowa just might rethink things. Iowa, after all, has a special relationship with Barack Obama. I don’t think they will reward a half-demented Grassley for obstructing his agenda.
Clearly, Grassley and the Republicans believe otherwise. They’ve managed to convince millions that the GOP is saving them from Obama’s death squads, and that the revolution must start with beating back the tyranny of providing affordable health insurance for all Americans.
It worked in 94. Why won’t it work in 2010?
Grassley seemed demented as far back as the Clinton impeachment hearings, and that hasn’t seemed to stop him
Max Baucus is the one at fault here. A weak Democrat chairing an important committee is a recipe for disaster.
In order for Grassley to lose, someone must run against him.
Are you kidding? Obama would probably campaign for Grassley with a glad heart.
No kidding. All the while the wingnuts are out there comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler, I’m beginning to think the appropriate Nazi-era comparison is to Paul von Hindenburg, the weak and naive Weimar president who basically let Hitler walk all over him and into power.
Did I really support this out-of-touch, weak-willed, and easily hoodwinked fool over Hillary Clinton? Yes, yes I did, and I am now profoundly sorry that I did so. Whatever other faults Clinton might have, she wouldn’t have been a doormat for Chuck Grassley and the growing Sturmabteilung of the GOP; she’d have shoved his bullshit right back up his lying ass.
When I got home this evening, the lead headline at HuffPost is proclaiming Obama’s willingness to continue working with Chuck “The gummint will smother grandma” Grassley. Work with him?
Maybe Obama should go back to spending all his time subsidizing Goldman-Sachs and covering up Bush-era war crimes and find someone with balls to actually fight for us. I didn’t spend hours waiting in line at the polls last November so this turkey could sit on his ass and make conciliatory noises to right-wing extremists.
Hillary Clinton was the CIA candidate in the Democratic race. Take out a photo of her standing among a roomful of generals, play back her soundbite about bombing Iran, think back fondly on her warm butt-slapping of John McCain, and then look at some of her supporters. Gloria Steinem, “ex” CIA propagandist who managed to drive a wedge between people of color and feminism in her op-ed piece in the NYT. Larry Johnson, the “ex” CIA propagandist, who spread racist bile throughout the campaign. Even Valerie Plame, whose Brewster Jennings gig may have in fact been over at the beginning of the first Bush Administration, out there plugging for Hillary.
And if you think that Hillary would do any better in the healthcare debate please flip back your diary to 1993.
Still, your comparison to the Weimar Republic is right on target. Add these similarities:
Modern militias versus the Black Reichswehr. After WWII there were secret reactionary militarized groups in Germany. Political assassinations knocked off everyone from communists like Rosa Luxemburg to right of center Catholic candidates. Think about your political assassinations here in the U.S. How come the assassins bullets seem to always drift to the left? Okay, except when the former head of the CIA is the Vice President.
Think about the thuggery of the brownshirts and Mussolini’s blackshirts and who financed them (German and Italian corporations) and who is backing the birthers and death panelists.
Have a nice day.
All Grassley did was put-an-end to bipartisanship, because really the Republicans have to at least meet you half-way. And when Sen Grassley gives the President Obama a back-handed slap to the face with his comments on death panels, it puts an end to bipartisan negotiations.
Get all the Democrats on Ship and steam-roll the Republicans into submission. None of them will vote for health care reform…it will be just like the stimulus packages they’ll make amendments and then all vote “no.”
I disagree .. .depending on what is in the bill .. I think you could see as many as 5 Republicans voting for the bill
I think the point is that we don’t need a single Republican vote and we aren’t likely to get enough to justify a single concession to them. I’m not sure we want a single Republican vote, because that handful of fair-weather friends will just use the success of the health care program to deny their seats to good Democrats.
We have more than bent over backwards for these assholes. It’s time to crush them mercilessly.
Actually they need plenty of Republican votes – Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Evan Bayh …
If you’re not going to get any of the Republicans with the (R) by their name, you’re going to need to get all of the Republicans with a (D) by their names to get it passed. Which is what this bi-partisan kabuki is all about – an attempt to create a climate where the Republicans with (D)s by their names are willing to vote for a health care bill.
Isn’t there a method that pet-project funding for Baucus, Bayh and Nelson can be “held back” by Congress or the Administration. The threat of a little administrative backlog for their stimulus money should make them remember their Democratic and not “Pharmacrats”
Yes, there’s a method. It’s called the Executive Branch. Congress can allocate all the funds it wants for whatever it wants, but if the president sits on his hands about it (and orders the appropriate executive agencies to sit on their hands about it), then not a goddamn thing happens.
Given that this president seems to be a past master at the art of sitting on his hands, he should be quite effective at it.
Give them a slap and they start apologizing and fawning. The Democratic Party is a battered woman.
P.S. Applies to men, too. I think McCain got Battered Woman Syndrome in Vietnam.
GOP politicians like Grassley are in a tough spot. They have to raise tons of money to get re-elected, and the only way to do that is to say batshit crazy stuff that will energize their base. If they made sense in their public statements, they would not enjoy enough support among their wingnut constituency. Didn’t Joseph Heller try to make a case something like this in “Catch-22?”
according to Wikipedia he belongs to The Family
So does Hillary Clinton.
Small world, folks. Now let us prey.
prey! nice! last year I attended a small (20 ppl or so) presentation by Jeff Sharlet about it with lots of q&a. Sounded like Hillary has more a peripheral involvement. Though she’s always been involved in religious orgs (but mainstream, i.e. in methodist orgs in college iirc) I don’t see her as a theocratic randian unlike the others. Have no idea about Grassley, but maybe someone’s influence is being felt? Or maybe he’s just flipped out.
Using his own words, I agree with his last portion of the quoted statement above. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life but well before that time. The bill provides counseling FOR end of life. The first portion of his quote confirms that the bill will provide assistance for end of life decisions. It does not limit such counseling to those lying on their death bed. The “deathers” should look for something else to get riled up about, perhaps the unequitable income distribution in our country?