Doyle McManus writes today about a town hall meeting between Blue Dog Democratic congressman Jason Altmire and a group of tea partiers. The Senate healthcare bill, he told them, doesn’t have a public option and doesn’t raise income taxes:
But the conversation ran aground when he asked a fundamental question: Shouldn’t the government help low-income people afford basic health insurance?
“No!” most of the visitors shouted.
“Some of you are never going to agree with me,” Altmire said.
It’s true! Some people are just never going to agree.
And that’s OK, what with this being a democracy and all. But I’ll say this: at least the tea partiers are being honest. Most elite conservatives — the ones who write for magazines or get elected to national office — like to tap dance around the question of the poor, pretending that things like tort reform or “more skin in the game” will make everything OK. They know perfectly well it isn’t true, but it’s politically incorrect to say that they don’t consider this a big deal, so they don’t.
But not the tea partiers. It’s not that they don’t understand that the poor often have to go without health insurance, it’s that they just don’t care. Not if fixing it requires the use of tax dollars, anyway. In a way, this is bracing. It’s also, I fear, an attitude that going to become more openly acceptable among mainstream conservatives in the near future as they discover that a big part of their base applauds the idea of dispensing with the tap dancing. Fasten your seat belts.
