Friday, February 26, 2010

Ben Stein Says The Reason Republicans Reject HCR Is Because They Pay More Taxes Than Democrats.



I honestly wrote my reaction to Obama's attempt to thrash things out with the Republicans over healthcare before I was even aware of this clip.

But I described the way the Republicans came across to me as this:

The Republicans came across as a bunch of resentful, rich white men asking,"Why should I pay for you?"
And, bang on cue, up steps former Nixon speech writer, Ben Stein, to make this point:
You asked one of the most brilliant questions I have ever heard anyone ask on TV, which is why are so many Republicans against more government interference in the health care system, and so many Democrats in favor of it? And the answer is much higher percentage of Republicans are taxpayers than Democrats and the Republicans are the people paying for it, and the Democrats are the people receiving it. So that has a lot to explain there.
They spent six hours yesterday trying to make their objections to healthcare about everything but that, but the undercurrent of what they were saying still seeped out.

Stein is only being more honest than any other Republican was yesterday.

His point is garbage, of course, but at least he was honest enough to say what is on his mind. He believes that wealthy people are naturally Republicans and that there is some kind of jealousy and resentment which fuels Democrats.

It simply would never occur to him that a person could be well off and still want a fairer system which helped those who were less well off. That's unthinkable to him.

2 comments:

daveawayfromhome said...

It also assumes that those wealthy people earned all their money by their own efforts, rather than controlling some enterprise where lower-paid employees made the wealthy people's money for them.

Kel said...

Exactly Dave.