Republicans are 'making fools of themselves' facing existential threat: journalist
John Harwood says the Republican Party’s current opposition to popular “Obamacare” subsidies for millions of Americans is on track with the party’s stubborn grip on the wrong side of arguments throughout history.
“They said Washington lacked the competence to run [the Social Security System], that the nation couldn’t afford it, that it would impoverish the working class,” Harwood tells Zeteo. “A ‘cruel hoax,’ declared the Republican Party’s leader.”
But in 90 years of operation, Social Security has cut the poverty rate among senior citizens by four-fifths, and it never failed to deliver promised benefits. That didn’t stop the party from using the same “swing-and-miss hysteria” against the creation of medical insurance for the elderly, with conservatives describing Medicare as a “step toward totalitarianism.”...