There are three separate parts of our government, the executive branch, the judicial branch and the legislative branch. That is three separate parts or branches of our government.
The House is one-half of the legislative branch. The Republicans, by about 17 votes (I'm being liberal with them on that number) control the House. So they really only control 1/6 of the government.
And they interpret that as a mandate for their extremist policies. Not by a long-shot.
And for all that, the Republicans have a big head-start when it comes to taking control of the Senate. That is because they come from a lot of states with relatively small populations. Of the three most heavily populated states only one is now predominately Republican. That's Texas.
California and New York, the populous states, are Democratic. Yet we only get two senators per state.
That proves that the Republican minority is pretty small.
Without dirty tricks, they have few votes. So they resort to dirty tricks.
The fundamentalist religious and socio-economic bents make it easy for them to justify using dirty tricks. Both the libertarians and the religious fanatics believe that their crazy theories are so right that they must and should try to impose them on others no matter how much the others resist.
It isn't a matter of trying to obtain something they believe is morally right and makes social sense like racial equality by persuading others that they are right. It is a matter of obtaining something they feel is right and makes social sense because it is right whether others agree or not. That is a dangerous fanaticism.
And it is not only among right-wingers. This goes beyond personal disobedience of the law to prove a point. When people practice passive resistance, they recognize that the authority will arrest them and jail them. That is part of the price they are willing to pay. The Republicans' fanaticism and strategy goes to trying to impose their will on others when they know very well the others don't want it.
If the Republicans could change the ACA through legislation, they would have done it.
The smart thing for all is to let the ACA go into implementation, see where the kinks are and following the majority will of the people as expressed in elections iron out the kinks. But collecting money to fund the cancer treatment for your best friend's mother who lost her job and her insurance after working for a company for 40 years is not the solution. And that is what the tea-baggers want to continue doing. The system we have had allocated health care to the rich and those with very sympathetic or rich friends.
That is not right because access to health care under our old system was purely arbitrary. In small town America, the popular football team player's mother got her cancer care or at least a little of it. But the single mother who was raising two small children somewhere in a forgotten slum in urban America could not even get a cancer examination. Too busy, too little money, no time, no money, just ignore the symptoms. And then end up dying within a week of being admitted to a hospital. No money, no doctor, no chance to say goodbye. You find out you had cancer and with two weeks you are gone. Your children are left. You had very little time for friends when you were alive. Your children and your family miss you. But no one else even knows you existed. Of course, I am drawing a picture of an extreme hypothetical case, but, no matter, that is not the way to allocate health care.
The Republican Party relates to small-town America where everyone knows each other. Too many Americans today live in anonymous big cities. The old system of relying on personal charity does not work in urban America.
So we need the ACA.
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