The options that don't get discussed
Anyone who thinks that 25 years of rightwing Republicanism ended with the election of Barack Obama should read E.J. Dionne's column today in the Washington Post. Dionne, always an interesting columnist, suggests that media coverage of Obama and things like national healthcare are being skewed to the right by slavish media attention to anything that comes out of the mouths of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. The opinions of left-leaning liberal politicians and commentators are left off the table.
That is certainly true in the healthcare debate, where the yearning of many Americans for a top-quality French or even Canadian-style single-payer (i.e., government-run) healthcare system covering all, no questions asked, and paid for by tax revenues is simply out of bounds for serious discussion, derided as "socialism" by the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis. Do you want to be forced to buy a health insurance policy from a private insurance company that hires people to look for ways not to pay your claims? That's where the debate is heading with single-payer taken off the table.
It is also true in Pennsylvania when it comes to options for closing the state's yawning budget deficit. Only the slash-the-budget, no-new-taxes approach of the Senate Republicans is deemed worthy of consideration by the Harrisburg Patriot-News and many other newspapers. We are told we must accept drastic cuts in library funding, an end to the acclaimed Governor's Schools for the Arts, and other programs that benefit everyone in the community rather than raise taxes. And if there is to be any kind of tax increase, it can only be in the state personal income tax on individuals and very small businesses, not in the various corporate taxes that affect Hershey Foods and other large corporations in the state.
I suspect many Republicans in the State Senate could be defeated in their next election by Democrats willing to run as Obama Democrats and not as Republican-Lites. The mass of Pennsylvanians didn't vote for Obama to keep the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis in power for another generation. They wanted real change and an end to the control by the rightwing Republicans at all levels. It is time to give them what they want.