Paul Krugman: How Bush and the right mock the poor.
George Bush's veto of the SCHIP was based on ideology and not on reality, as the lead NYT editorial pointed out. Paul Krugman gives a whole history of how the Republicans have mocked poor people and their sufferings and how they have engaged on systematic attacks on our children over the last 40+ years. In other words, if you are poor and are looking for food, they somehow think that it is all a big joke.
For instance, Ronald Reagan:
“We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”
Bill Kristol:
“First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.”
George Bush:
“I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said Mr. Bush in July. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” Referring to Medicaid spending — which fails to reach many children — he declared that “when they say, well, poor children aren’t being covered in America, if that’s what you’re hearing on your TV screens, I’m telling you there’s $35.5 billion worth of reasons not to believe that.”
The reason right-wingers talk like this is because they have become completely devoid of empathy in their mad quest for more and more power. In other words, Conservatism is inherently selfish because it is all about them.
And this sort of thing has led them to totally mortgage our childrens' future. For instance, they advocate the repeal of the 16th Amendment and deprive immigrant children of a chance to live a better life here. They ridicule the idea of global warming, even though it is more dangerous than any of us imagined a few years ago. They demand that our schools test our children more and more and straightjacket them into a narrow conformity in which people do not fit in.
George Bush can put all the spin and window-dressing that he wants. But for all his rhetoric about "compassionate conservatism," all it does is mask the fact that there is no compassion whatsoever. The only difference is that "compassionate conservatism" means depriving our children and then saying, "I'm sorry."
Obamathon
