Roundup: Calling Health Reform the “Greatest Threat to Freedom” Boehner Leads Circus on the Hill

Jodi Jacobson

How's this for hyperbole? At a press conference yesterday, House minority leader John Boehner called the House health reform bill "the greatest threat to freedom I have seen in my 19 years in Washington."

How’s this for hyperbole?  At a press conference yesterday, House minority leader John Boehner called the House health reform bill "the greatest threat to freedom I have seen in my 19 years in Washington."


John Boehner’s impassioned hyperbole at a GOP health care rally on November 5th.

A piece of legislation meant to increase health care coverage for millions of people throughout the United States is the "greatest threat to freedom" he has ever seen? 

The House bill is so "out there" it has been endorsed by such radical
organizations as the American Medical Association and the American
Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which represents some 40 million Americans. 

This would be laughable if not for the following realities.  First, he is in fact the leader of one of two major political parties in the United States and has engaged in destructive rhetoric since day one of the Obama Administration. 

Two, he leads House Republicans, who have vowed not to deliver one single vote in favor of health reform tomorrow (Saturday) despite innumerable efforts by Democrats to appease even the most outlandish requests by the Republicans.  (And for some reason the Democrats continue to believe they need to compromise with these folks, which only emboldens them further.)

And three, he and others in the Republican party–a party that is itself now so far right in its entirety there is no "wing" left to speak of, it just is the party of the far, far right–are relying on the frenzy of a large contingent of people from throughout the United States so ill-informed and so unable to engage in democratic debate about anything that they were comparing health reform to the Holocaust.  Really.

"National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany — 1945," read a sign that ThinkProgress’ Lee Fang captured on camera. The image appears to show dead bodies from the Nazi holocaust piled one on top of another.

teapartyzoom Tea Partiers heckle police as protesters arrested

Blogger Matthew Yglesias commented:

There are all kinds of nutty people in the world, but these kinds of
things are the wages of a conservative leadership and media that’s
consistently tried to drum up opposition to health care reform not by
opposing things that are actually in the bill, but with demagogic
opposition to completely fabricated provisions.

That pretty much sums it up.  

Other News to Note

November 6th, 2009

November 5th, 2009