The health care reform effort in Congress is hitting some snags, and reports are discussing how the republicans see this as a make or break moment for the Obama administration. The republicans want to stop reform to make Obama look bad and weaken his chances to implement other parts of his agenda. Jim DeMint (R-SC) called it a “Waterloo moment” for the president.
This is why people hate politicians. Because instead of focusing on policy and helping their country and their constituents, they play douche bag political games like this is some sort of high school mock senate instead of the real thing.
If politicians don’t like the health care reform bills being presented, that’s fine. They are challenging bills, and concerns about their cost or about growing government bureaucracy or any number of other issues are legitimate. Hell, if you think that the free market should rule and people should be on their own for health care, that’s a legitimate, although heartless, view.
Virtually everyone – including republicans – agrees that health care reform is needed. The disastrous state of the American health care system is well known. So to fight health care reform bill – not fight to improve it, but fight against it passing at all – just to score political points, well that sucks. As happens so often here at Thoughtbasket, I must ask our representatives to stop dicking around and do the right thing.
Thoughtbasket 
just emailed this to all my elected representatives! a verbal kick in the ass from thoughtbasket!
I certainly agree with you on this. On the other hand. The way the US Congress is set up, sometimes you need to just plain stop the current bill, rather than trying to alter it. That isn’t to say that Healthcare Reform isn’t a good thing for the US at this time, but, for example, if you think the current legislation being promoted is going in the completely wrong direction, there isn’t much you can do to amend it to make it actually better.
It’s like driving a car the wrong way. Sometimes you just gotta stop the car before you try to turn around. Or at least slow it down, take some of the power out of its momentum.
I agree that party politics should determine a persons stance on the bill though. Attacking a bill, any bill, because you want to attack the person who is promoting it is wrong. But trying to stop a bill because you disagree with its direction on what the “other side” (of the debate) considers to be non-negotiable… that makes perfect sense to me.
Republicans should be offering their own (workable) legislation. And everyone should be arguing the merits of each legislation (so long as people are actually allowed to read it before debate begins, re: Climate bill that passed the House). Unfortunately many politicians seem to care more about party favor than legislation… or even their constituents.
I agree that sometimes the only way to stop legislation with which you don’t agree is to vote against it. But DeMint and the other Repubs have admitted that they are voting here for purely political reasons.