How Fares The Republic: Movement Conservatism Cruelty

This embrace of cruelty is arguably the dominant feature of the present conservative movement. - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Romney gives his own explanation for his loss:

"You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge," Mr. Romney said. "Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group."

The only reason for moving the United States toward the universal health care offered by most other prosperous nations is to bribe voters? Let's look at that premise.

Back in 2010 2009 Andrew Sullivan described a good idea:

a healthcare plan that expands access, removes obvious cruelties and inefficiencies, allows more people into the system and can be plausibly described as universal coverage.

In the same year 2010 he wrote:

We now have more public clarity on the critical issue. The Democrats want to provide basic private insurance to the 40m or so working poor who don't have it. The Republicans don't  want to. Both parties want to stop the cruelty of denying people access to health insurance because they have a pre-existing condition, but if you do only that, then the insurance companies will take a big hit and hike premiums even more, rendering even more people without insurance. So you have to have a way to get the companies to agree to this by giving them 40m more customers to outweigh the costs. Only the Obama plan does that. The Republicans have nothing.

Except Romney didn't want to stop the cruelty, because doing a good thing for the people would reflect favorably on the Democratic party. Romney said he had his own plan, but here he is tacitly admitting that he didn't, because if he had, the American people would have given him credit for it and erased the Demo advantage. 

Here is Sullivan (blogging a Republican primary debate) on conservatives' cruelty:

I was surprised by the ineptness of Perry's attack on Romneycare. But I am more surprised at the cheering of someone dying because he couldn't afford intensive care. Yes, the GOP is now not only cheering executions; they are cheering people dying because they cannot afford any health insurance. Cheering death by poverty. "Yeah!" came the cry at the thought of a twentysomething dying because he didn't have insurance. I didn't think I could be more shocked by the instincts of those in the Republican base, but I just was.

Ta-Nehisi Coates recounts an email sent by a federal judge:

"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'" the email joke reads.

"His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

Coates writes:

What stuns you about this "joke" is the sheer embrace of cruelty. Here is a woman who lost her life to cancer. And [the judge's take on this] is imagining her son as the product of bestiality.

Though less crudely stated, this embrace of cruelty is arguably the dominant feature of the present conservative movement.

Andrew Sullivan's comment on the Romney excuse for his loss which begins this post:

Romney gives his own explanation for his loss to the only people he really cared about: his donor base. As usual with Republicans these days, there is no real personal responsibility. They do nothing wrong ever. They confess to no mistakes themselves. And we now kinda know that Romney's "47 percent" remarks were actually what he deeply believes.

A number of newspapers endorsed Romney, just before the election, arguing that the kinder gentler Romney who miraculously appeared just at the end of the campaign was the real Romney, the one we'd see in the Oval Office.

But it wasn't. Romney lied when he said his "47 percent" remarks didn't reflect his actual beliefs. He had no plans to "stop the cruelty of denying people access to health insurance" because they were poor, because he sees such things solely from the self-aggrandizing politics of political advantage. The enormous contribution to the public good of a health plan which will prevent millions of Americans' needlessly dying from preventable illnesses meant nothing.

This is the mindset that without shame practices the politics of obstruction. This is the cruel worldview which is willing to sabotage the nation's wellbeing for partisan advantage.

If the shoe were on the other foot, if it were the Democrats who were wreaking havoc with our politics, the party that was just repudiated at the polls by the American people would call it treason.

It is not partisan to object to the Republican party as it now stands, because at the present day  it does not represent a viable political alternative. It is not partisan to object to cruelty and heartlessness and destruction. One instead notes that one is dealing with cruelty and heartlessness and destruction, and passes regretfully on.