Pierce: A Shameless Bill Deserves a Shameless Pitchman

Rick Santorum rides to the Republican rescue on healthcare.

Thursday’s results on the fiasco that is the Cassidy-Graham-Johnson-Heller-Nash-and-Young dog’s breakfast of a healthcare bill shows that Rank Charlatanism won the race, and won it wire to wire. They really would like to persuade Lisa Murkowski to betray all those people in Anchorage who threw a rally to thank her for her efforts the last time the Senate Republicans tried to immiserate the lives of millions of sick Americans. So, the brain trust behind this latest campaign of vandalizing the national health came up with a novel pitch to convince Murkowski to vote in favor of eviscerating the Affordable Care Act. They would let Alaska keep… the Affordable Care Act.

Here is where I’d like to mention something to which I have not given sufficient attention. If you’re going to create so shameless an attack on sick people, and if you are going to do it so shamelessly that you’re reversing not only things you said before, but also, as is the case with Murkowski, reversing yourself on the entire raison d’etre of your bill, you need someone with extensive experience at being shameless in public to show you the way.

Hi, there, Rick Santorum, and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is?

Remember: Rick Santorum was Ted Cruz before Ted Cruz was. He was cordially disliked by his fellow senators; Bob Kerrey once opined that Santorum was Latin for “asshole.” In his last campaign for the Senate, he lost by 15 points to Bob Casey, Jr., who, while a decent skin, is not exactly pyrotechnical on the stump. If Rick Santorum is involved in a piece of legislation, you can count on that piece of legislation being hurtful to people who are easy to hurt, and moralistic to the point of low comedy.

Just look, he’s still bragging about how he spurred the block granting of welfare as part of the welfare “reform” of the mid-1990s. The fact is, the “reforms” of which he’s so proud went sour within a decade.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12447567/santorum-healthcare-graham/