The best thing to be said about Congressman John Campbell is that he’s effectively a lame duck. He posted this piece on The FlashReport last week where he, not the president, compared Republicans to Terrorists for holding the federal government hostage over an Obamacare repeal. Campbell took issue with the president’s phone call with the president of Iran, something that hasn’t happened in more than 30 years and used this as a non-sequitur about the President’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans over Obamacare.
Campbell wrote:
Yes, President Obama will negotiate with a country whose government oppresses women and religious minorities at a level seen hardly anywhere else on earth, practices a cruel and tryannical form of sharia law, and has killed untold millions of people over the past 30 years. He will negotiate with a country like this in order to allow it to have “peaceful nuclear power” because it can, of course, be trusted not to use it to exterminate Israel or Americans or anyone else………. ……..but, he will not negotiate with John Boehner or Republicans in Congress…….because we have the audacity to agree with the majority of the American people in wanting the repeal of the massively-failed plan called “ObamaCare”. This, according to his press secretary, is actual terrorism.
So many things wrong about this statement and some that are chuckle-worthy. The easiest first. The majority of Americans do not want ObamaCare repealed.
From the story in Forbes: “But a new survey of 1,976 registered voters finds that only 33 percent believe that the health law should be repealed, delayed, or defunded. 29 percent believe that “Congress should make changes to improve the law,” 26 percent believe that “Congress should let the law take effect” and see what happens, and 12 percent believe that the law should be expanded. The bottom line? Voters are skeptical that Obamacare will live up to Democrats’ hype. But they also believe that it should be given a chance to succeed.
The new poll was conducted by the Morning Consult, a healthcare media company founded by Michael Ramlet. Ramlet, in evaluating the results of his survey, finds that voters are “unmoved by three months of the defund argument,” and that a majority would “blame congressional Republicans a lot for a government shutdown.”
Campbell, like so many Republicans, lives his career in the right wing Echo chamber. He’ll enjoy Cadilliac health insurance for the rest of his life as a retired member of Congress. He calls the plan a failure before it’s actually had a chance to succeed.
Campbell writes on with the following statement; let me know when you call out “bull$#!t for the hypocrisy.
“I have been a Republican my entire life. I think Democrats are wrong on many things. I disagree with them and debate them. But, I have always known that they want a better America and are fighting for a better America, just as I do. We just have a disagreement on what that should look like and how to get there. But, I have always, and will always, talk and negotiate with them because they are basically good people. And frankly, we will never achieve anything lasting without some bipartisanship. But, this president obviously does not see Republicans that way. To negotiate with the terrorist state of Iran and nearly simultaneously say he will not negotiate with the democratic opposition in his own country is the most reprehensible statement I have ever heard from anyone elected to public office. This president is irresponsible and chooses to be extreme for dramatic purposes. He made that abundantly clear in the last 24 hours. I plead with my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate to abandon their compulsion to follow their president. I understand that compulsion. We, Republicans, all had it with George W. Bush. But when the president is so obviously wrong, the members of that president’s party who have the courage to follow their own convictions are the real patriots.”
I guess Congressman Campbell could only be a true patriot in the sense he voted for the auto industry bailout. But I’m challenged to remember a single time Campbell didn’t vote along with the Bush administration.