At The Core

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Senator Joe Lieberman announced his retirement this week, thanking his family and reminiscing on his childhood. To many, his decision comes too late in the game for any real satisfaction. Liberals would far rather he’d absented himself during the Bush years when he seemed joined at the hip to highly visible Republican cohorts John McCain and Lindsey Graham, their token Democrat providing aid to a ruthless NeoCon agenda. When I think about Joe, I think about a word we don’t use very often any more: double-cross. Joe double-crossed us, again and again.

Given his record, it’s no wonder that Clueless Joe had to run as an Independent in 2008 in order to keep his senatorial position. According to the jungle drums, Lieberman has given up on politics because the votes are no longer there. Sometimes the milk just sours. The bone he threw in support of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and his eventual but reluctant vote for health care reform, after months of obstruction, weren’t enough to return him to respectability. I, for one, look forward to never having ‘Joementum’ interfere with the passage of progressive legislation again.

Besides, we have plenty of people to replace him now. Despite the enormous, unsustainable amounts of money this nation spends on health care, Republicans still refuse to entertain remediation to our very broken, for-profit medical system. Newly in control of the House, they will do everything they can to kill off last year’s insurance reform. Republican Steve King of Iowa, repeating the newest GOP talking point on FOX News, called ‘Obamacare’ a tumor that must be eliminated; he proposes to do that by starving it of funds. This sounds dire, something that could wound the efficacy of the Affordable Care Act but, in truth, the plan is funded by law and can only be hampered in small increments, a bit at a time. That is what Pubs like House hit-man, Darrell Issa, and others plan to do, hoping to shake public confidence and weaken the coalition of support that brought it to pass in the first place. They intend to tear the legislation apart, clause by pesky clause.

The House Republicans have done their part by voting to repeal the act, a symbolic rejection not likely to pass the Senate nor Obama’s veto. Citing a supposed mandate to turn back a “job-crushing health care law” — but no longer “job-killing”, such earlier rhetoric adjusted by Mr. Boehner in an attempt to bring the national dialog back to ‘civility’ — they have taken a first whack at spoiling the jewel in Obama’s crown. According to the Speaker, this will continue to be their national priority: “There’s a lot of tricks up our sleeve in terms of how we can dent this, kick it, slow it down, to make sure it never happens. And trust me, I want to make sure this health care bill never, ever, ever is implemented.” If you listen carefully you will hear what John didn’t say, but was certainly thinking: “… and Gawd help us all if it turns out to be a success!”

Despite talk of socialized medicine, a recent poll found that only 33 percent of Americans want health care reform entirely repealed; in fact, the numbers for and against this legislation haven’t changed in the year since it was passed. That’s because the policies put in place months ago are only now beginning to apply to insurance carriers, making proposed benefits largely enigmatic at this point. Further, full coverage for millions of uninsured will not be available until 2014.

Offering nothing to replace their repeal, the Republicans seem strangely unaware of their own vulnerability. The Washington Post recently reported that almost half of Americans under 65 have preexisting conditions — some 129 million of us, not old enough for Medicare, who would surely become vulnerable to coverage rejection or skyrocketing price hikes. 75 percent of Dems approve the new health care rules while 80 percent of Pubs oppose them; yet, ironically, half of us in this country are essentially eligible for some form of the death panels Sarah Palin fears so much, with not government but insurance carriers “getting between us and our doctor.” And who wants to argue against something like the end to lifetime caps?

What drives the GOP to ignore the needs of their own voters, then? How can an entire political party eschew a bill that promises assistance to so many? They’re driven to defeat Obama on all things progressive, of course, and continue to curry favor with business interests. Because the game of politics is best played by winners, that is all the motive needed by some of these legislators to betray their constituents. But there is one more reason that seems to be emerging from the depths of the conservative soul, something as bewildering to those in the Union camp … ummmm, liberal camp …. as it was dear to the Confederate. At the heart of this argument is the Tea Bagger insistence that returning the power of life and death back to predatory insurance companies is what the Founders — stern, pragmatic businessmen; propertied, white, Christian males, all — would have wanted.

Two judges have now ruled mandated insurance purchase unconstitutional, while two others have tossed out similar suits. Eventually, this challenge will go to the Supreme Court of the United States. Some have suggested that the Department of Justice pull the plug on lower court process, cutting to the chase by handing the case directly to SCOTUS. In a 5-4 right-leaning high court, I don’t find that possibility comforting, but I’ll also admit I find the initial premise baffling: why would insurance carriers want to turn down some 30+ million additional locked-in customers? It’s not like them to turn down profit. What gives?

The internal division within the Republican party seems to be fracturing along a constitutional fault line called ‘originalism,’ which insists that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its authors’ original intent and cultural understanding. I know how crazy that sounds, but it’s dangerously real, and all the conservative Supremes are on board. Justice Antonin Scalia, senior member of the high court, recently explained that 14th Amendment protections were written for slaves freed after the Civil War and did not include women, in direct defiance of a Warren Berger opinion from 1971. According to Scalia’s interpretation, females are not to be considered unequal but have not been declared equal, either. This may be a good argument for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, but it certainly pares the Constitution down from a responsive social document to a one-dimensional set of absolutes from an earlier, increasingly archaic period.

As we peel away layers of social and political strata to get to the core of our differences, I think we’ll find pay dirt in originalism. A growing number of Americans believe that American principles have been betrayed by a liberal constitutional interpretation and that it’s time to “take the nation back.” I believe you’ll recognize both the phrase and the sentiment. This is very old business in our nation, as are states’ rights, matters of militia, and the viability of civil rights. The topic is enjoying a resurgence, hopefully a final one.

Scalia recently accepted an invitation from Michelle Bachmann to instruct a class in constitutionalism for congressional newbies. It is no surprise, then, that the version of the Constitution read on the first day of Congress was abridged, leaving out portions of the document the right does not favor; like the three-fifths citizenship of people of color, for instance. Justice John Roberts swore in new Republican congresspersons. Alito and Thomas have participated in Bagger gatherings, and Thomas’s wife headed up a Tea Party PAC for a time. I seriously doubt that a single one of these Justices intend to recuse themselves from future cases that will define the coming century.

Going forward into a new and pivotal political year, track the number of times you hear about the Constitution. We have the right-leaning members of the Supreme Court, to a man, adjudicating from the bench as activist judges. We have a growing number of obstructionists attempting to turn back markers of civilization to leave us with a skeletal system of governance. We’re coming to the core of our national disagreement now, and I think it’s no cosmic accident that both Obama and Biden are professors of Constitutional law. Now we must recognize the old lines drawn in the sand — too often watered with our blood — definitively resolve them for a new era and, eventually, bind up this nation’s wounds once and for all.