THE GRAND OLD PARTY IS ANYTHING BUT GRAND!

        The Grand Old Party is anything but grand!  

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas

        The only thing they agree on is their hatred of President Obama. But they don’t agree on how to get rid of Obamacare. The right wing fanatics are willing to shut down the government to accomplish that goal. And their Senate spokesperson, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has the gall to blame that eventuality on the President for his unwillingness to cave in to their efforts to abolish the health care legislation he fought so hard to enact!
        What do Senators Cruz, Rand Paul, and their ilk care if people who depend on Social Security to survive won’t receive their monthly payments? What do they care if thirty million Americans will not have affordable health insurance? What do they care if millions of  Americans are already enjoying the benefits of the new law? What do they care if the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation have both estimated that the Affordable Health Care Act will eventually result in reducing the national deficit? What do they care that the nation resoundingly reelected the President who succeeded in enacting legislation that others had tried and failed to do? What do they care if the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the law, despite the Republicans’ concerted efforts to overturn it? What do they care if their misrepresentations of the Health Care law have been refuted point by point?
        Their more moderate colleagues are equally opposed to Obamacare, but they don’t want to plunge the nation into a disastrous financial crisis in order to repeal it. To be sure, their motives are not entirely altruistic, for they see the adverse political consequences of such a course of action. Despite all the misinformation put forth by the GOP, the public support for the new health program continues to mount, and the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want to see their government shut down. If it happens, they know whom to blame for it!
        As I write this, Senator Cruz is still speaking on the floor of the Senate in his effort to defeat Obamacare. They’re calling it a “faux” filibuster, because it is not technically a filibuster. But the Senator rants on and on, to the consternation even of some of his Republican colleagues. He’s a hero to his ultra-conservative right-wing ideologues, but to his moderate colleagues he’s a fly in the ointment, and to many if not most Americans, who now have seen the benefits of the Affordable Health Act, he is a deceitful demagog whose political motives are as obvious as his false statements.
        Our country needs a united not a divided GOP. But whatever became of the concept of the “loyal opposition”? The total lack of cooperation of the Republicans throughout President Obama’s entire tenure in office has been a huge impediment to legislative progress and is totally reprehensible and unconscionable.
        I hope they pay the price for their behavior in the forthcoming mid-term elections.