The One-Yard Line

“We’re now on the one-yard line,” Ax locates the Health Care Reform ball.  Perhaps.  But any team in sports using the Senate playbook would never break the red zone let alone win a game.  Winning requires goals shared by individuals willing to sacrifice for the whole.  If a majority of 51 could pass legislation Senate Democrats might even meet the definition.

51 votes and we have a public option.  51 votes and we have Medicare buy-in.  60 votes and we are forced to provide universal health coverage through a system that insures obscene profits for private corporations.  60 votes and we enshrine the old system of torturing those profits from the sick and dying.

Paul Krugman provides deeper historical perspective of the filibuster in today’s New York Times.  Short version:  it was used sparingly until this arcane procedural rule ran into the current crop of Senate Republicans.

Let’s translate the GOP use of the filibuster for nearly every piece of legislation.  Republicans stand against the representative democracy built by our founding fathers.  They based the union on the ideal that common good grows from the free market place of ideas.  Come all and reason from the best thinking of each individual.  Take action on the consensus of the majority.  Collective wisdom-the fuel of progress-is set free.

Those who know Vietnam will remember the words of one military commander:  We had to destroy the village in order to save it.  Senate Republican now apply the strategy to the nation.

Crawling through the emotional and intellectual minefield of health care reform grants all the right to disappointment.  It cannot take you to voting Republican in 2010 if you care about a more perfect American union.