February 13th, 2009:

via Consortiumnews.com.

By Robert Parry, February 13, 2009

Sixteen years ago, when another new Democratic President was trying to enact an economic package, the Republicans were entrenched in opposition, too. But there was a striking difference between those Republicans and today’s: the 1993 Republicans still showed some respect for democracy.

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In those “old days” – covering all of U.S. history except for the present – the filibuster was reserved for disputes over core principles..

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It wasn’t until the Republicans lost their majorities in the House and Senate in 2007 that today’s promiscuous use of the filibuster (or threats to launch a filibuster) became a regular feature of the U.S. Senate, so much so that many reporters covering Congress now act as if it’s always been this way.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader

Instead of noting how anti-democratic the Republican tactics are in denying the will of the majority, these correspondents intone in a world-weary way about how in the Senate 60 votes are needed to do just about anything – the natural way of things.

This media tendency to go soft on the Republicans fits with the continued rightward tilt of the Washington press corps, now dominated by a mix of right-wing ideologues who share the Republican philosophy and shallow careerists who know that they’ll enhance their job security by bending right.

The Republicans, and their echo chamber the main stream media, seem worried that if they ease back away from their daily barrage of partisan slander and outright lies that the moderates (who can swing any election just about any direction) will go soft. The moderate voters will start agreeing with the Democrats idea of bipartisanship and the Republicans will loose all hope of ever gaining back a majority.

The other thing that scares Republicans is the thought of going back to their districts next election cycle in 2010 and be attacked from the right. It’s the thought of a strong primary challenge they cannot face.

A charismatic, well financed challenger could come forward and make claims that the incumbent isn’t a real Republican and he isn’t “right” enough, or conservative enough.

Loosing their seat to a Democrat is less likely than loosing their seat in the primary to a more fundamental neo-con than them, because most of the Republicans in congress come from districts that are fairly safe Republican districts.

Failed Post-Partisanship

But instead of the Republican-obstruction storyline, the conventional wisdom has been that Obama “failed” in his goal of achieving post-partisanship and that the Democrats are beset by infighting over the need to modify the stimulus package. Almost never are the Republicans blamed for sabotaging Obama’s efforts to ease the partisan bickering in Washington.

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Nevertheless, the bigger story is that Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders appear to have committed themselves to permanent trench warfare…

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Whether the Republicans like it or not, the American people elected Barack Obama by a decisive margin and gave the Democrats increased majorities in the House and Senate.

Instead of accepting those results and serving as a loyal opposition, the Republicans have fallen back to their final line of defense – their strength in the national news media – and they have wheeled out the filibuster to blast away at President Obama’s hope of enacting a coherent economic plan.

Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D.

And the main stream media is right there  to spin everything they say into the truth, or sow the seeds of reasonable doubt. This is evidence by CNN picking up the baseless lie from Betsy McCaughey, (pronounced McCoy) former lieutenant governor of New York and adjunct senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute,  about a long standing practice that was beefed up in the new stimulus.The Hudson Institute is financed by the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

She stomped and shouted like a child that the Obama stimulus would create a new bureaucracy that would mandate your doctor’s actions and treatment at the bedside. The truth is that the stimulus simply added money to a program started by George W. Bush that  reviews medical records and documents doing what’s called “comparative effectiveness research”.

It is research done by doctors a statisticians to determine which treatment works best, then it is offered to any particular physician as a suggested, not mandatory, course of treatment. This research is another tool doctors may use to help them diagnose and treat disease.

In an article in today’s Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein spells out how innocuous this research program is by stating the obvious benefits:

What the critics don’t have, however, is any shred of evidence that the professionals who do this research are incompetent or have any but the best intentions in trying to figure out what treatments are the most effective for patients. There is no reason to believe that once this clinical research is completed, it cannot be used in a disciplined, scientific way by physicians, economists and medical ethicists to determine whether there are drugs, tests, surgical procedures or devices that simply don’t deliver enough benefit to justify their cost. And there is no reason we cannot set up reasonable procedures, overseen by independent health professionals, to protect patients who can demonstrate a special need for a treatment that is not normally cost-effective.

This isn’t Britain. This is a country in which there is a deep cultural and political preference for autonomy and individual choice, particularly when it comes to health care. Ours is a country that values competition, embraces innovation, respects markets, and is suspicious of politicians and government bureaucrats. It is a country that is both willing and able to spend more than any other country on its medical care.

But ours is an economy that is sinking under the weight of a health-care system that costs twice as much as any in the world while delivering poorer health outcomes. The cost of health care has crippled entire industries, disadvantaged our companies in international competition and brought millions of families into bankruptcy. Worst of all, in denying vital medical services to the 40 million Americans without health insurance, we engage in the most immoral kind of medical rationing imaginable — rationing by the ability to pay.

Yea. It gripes my ass that there are insurance bureaucrats telling me which doctor I can see and what treatment they will approve. When will we learn that medical care is supposed to be free and public and part of the commons, as all other countries but ours have learned?

This is a prime example of how a lie like the one Betsy McMcCaughey told can spin out of control.  The media are all too anxious to back the right wing talking points no matter how off base and out of touch they are. It is this, the firestorm that this lie started, that becomes the faux justification for the Republicans use of the filibuster.