Monica Crowley, our favorite Fox News conspiracy theorist, did not disappoint last night when she substituted as host on the Hannity show. In a Republicans-only discussion about their efforts to defund and destroy the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, Crowley announced that Obamacare is really about President Obama’s attempt to gain power and control over Americans. But when you consider the radical-right goals that are regularly supported on Fox News - including the current efforts to undo the legislation by blackmailing America with a threat to shut down the government - you can't miss the glass house from which Crowley was throwing her stones.
Crowley said to her two guests, Republican Congressman Michael Burgess and Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn:
Of course, socialized medicine is the cornerstone of (Obama’s ‘fundamental transformation of the nation’). …The overall issue here for them (the Obama administration) is that Obamacare …was never about health care or health insurance. It was about government power and control.
Blackburn agreed: “That’s right. Controlling people’s lives. This is what it’s about.”
This, from the woman who demanded federal control of women’s health care choices. But maybe women’s health doesn’t count in Blackburn’s calculation of freedom.
Not surprisingly, nobody pointed out Blackburn’s hypocrisy. She continued, uninterrupted: “Pushing the nation closer to the edge of bankruptcy.” Yeah, just pay no attention to the costs of shutting down the government. The Washington Post reports that "A government shutdown would hinder the economy, waste billions of dollars in federal funds and put a scare in the markets, according to experts.”
Crowley certainly didn’t care about that cost. Apparently, money is no object to this crowd when it comes to advancing their own political agenda. “No one can afford the fundamental transformation of America,” Crowley said smugly, before thanking her guests for their “fearlessness.”
What Crowley really meant was that no one can afford the transformation of the country unless it's a conservative transformation. Because when it comes to fundamentally transforming and privatizing Social Security and Medicare, turning back the clock on voting rights, undoing a woman’s right to choose and now sabotaging democratically-passed legislation upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, Fox News is all for it. And, as this segment shows, Crowley and her like-minded guests are perfectly happy to hold the U.S. government hostage to enact their agenda. Even when the American people don't want Obamacare defunded.
So who’s really all about control?
Oh, yeah… She joined the rest of Fox News in their shoulders shuffling a lot while their hands were under the desk.
The real question now is what John Boehner will do with his caucus today. It sounds like they’re trying to take another “gut the ACA” vote and then send the budget bill back to the Senate rather than simply approving the budget. If they do that, they will trigger a shutdown, simply because the Senate will not be able to return the bill to the House until mid-week, due to the rules about cloture, etc. The options they’re discussing are the same untenable ones that were dismissed weeks and months ago, and it appears the GOP and Fox News have not learned their lesson about them yet.
If the House votes to gut the ACA out of the budget bill again, and sends that version back to the Senate, then the Senate will likely repeat what they did this week, which will involve removing the incorrect and inflammatory language and then returning the bill to the House. Which means the House is just setting themselves up to have an identical vote in another week, which will be after the shutdown, at which point they will be forced to explain why they are behaving in such an irresponsible manner. This also leads directly into the Debt Ceiling discussion, which the House will have effectively blown due to their intransigence here. And it’s a sad fact that Fox News seems to be cheerleading this approach all the way.
