Revenge is a dish best served cold

For those of us who are Star Trek fans the phrase “Revenge is a dish best served cold” rings a bell. Although the phrase has its history before Star Trek and its routes are in French I thought it would be well applied to this blog.
Since the ascension of President Obama in January 2009 the Republican Party and a vast majority of its members have been nothing but deceitful and dishonest, primarily with the health care reform bill proposed and passed by the present administration and the Congress. The reason I say that they were deceitful and dishonest is because they ran ads telling people that their health care was going to be either taken away or rationed. At the town hall meetings across country and primarily in democratic held house seats people were being bussed in by groups paid for by the insurance company, creating havoc at many of these town hall meetings. They also campaigned against the mandatory requirement. The interesting thing about this last issue is that in 1994 when President Clinton was trying to propose health care reform the Republican Party was in favor on the mandatory requirement. Even Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, and before he changed his mind, said he was in favor of people being forced to purchase insurance.
But here is where the revenge comes into the picture, in one of the most red districts in the northeast, in the 26th district of New York State, a state that Obama carried by more than 25 points in 2008 but lost in the district by more than 10 points, a district that has only voted 4 times (including 05/26/11) since 1857, voted for a Democrat. After the punishment that the Democrats suffered in 2010 this is a rude awakening for Republicans.
Since they have become the majority in the House of Representatives this past January the only thing that they have tried to do is defund the health care reform bill, shutdown the government, maintain the welfare state for oil companies, although they are making record profits, and vote for the Ryan Bill which tries to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid. This last item is was cost the election to the republican candidate for the House of Representatives in this district, because she said that she would have voted for the Ryan Bill.
Republicans have also seen tremendous resistance from the population across country with that bill.
81 % of Americans believe that Medicare and Medicaid should be left alone, 71% of Americans say that the Bush tax cuts should be rolled back. A vast majority of Americans also believe that the giveaways to the oil companies should be eliminated. Everything that the Republican Party disagrees with.
But now, to their surprise, their candidate got voted down because she supported those unpopular and draconian measures, especially when the Ryan bill wants to reduce taxes by 10% for the wealthiest. There are other alternatives. It looks like Republicans have misread their hand, not only in New York but also in other places such as Wisconsin when they overreached, and now they find some of the State legislators being recalled because of their vote.
If Democrats stay on message for 2012 they should be able to keep the Senate, recover the House of Representatives and keep the White House. And the message is simple, keep the Corporations and their cronies off of Medicare, off of Medicaid, roll back the tax cuts for the wealthy and stop the subsidies for the oil companies.