What the healthcare battle is REALLY about . . .

I've seen folks on numerous sites writing that they simply cannot understand the desperation of House Republicans to stop the Affordable Care Act before it has even really started. And if you accept the House GOP's position at face value, it is indeed hard to make much sense of. I mean, if House Republicans really think the Affordable Care Act is a disaster and doomed to failure, then the logical thing to do, politically speaking, would be to allow it to be implemented. If they are correct in their estimation of the law, it will shortly flop big time, and the GOP will then be in a prime position to reap electoral rewards for the Democrats' colossal blunder.

But of course, concern over the law's potential for failure is NOT what is driving this fight. What's really at stake here (and the reason the GOP is so desperate to shut 'Obamacare' down before it has even started), is the continued success of a 30+ year propaganda campaign waged by conservatives, beginning with Ronald Reagan. to undermine the very notion that the government can play any positive, proactive role in addressing any of the social or economic problems the nation faces. The GOP was bitterly opposed to both Social Security and Medicare -- two of the most successful social programs ever implemented by the U.S. government. (cf. the audio clip linked below, of Reagan in 1961 predicting doom and gloom with respect to Medicare, with many of the arguments you now hear against the ACA).

This across-the-board, utter demonization of government, with its hysterical invocations of 'communism' and 'socialism' whenever the government proposed to try to address a social or economic issue, was not the mainstream view of either major party in 1961, but was instead considered on the radical fringe, even for Republicans (who throughout the '50s, 60s and much of the '70s were pretty progressive by today's standards -- arguably more progressive than today's Democratic Party in some respects) It was Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for the presidency that finally conferred an air of legitimacy to this anti-government worldview. Those of us who are old enough to remember Reagan's '76 and '80 campaigns will recall the way he hammered away on the campaign trail with phrases like, "Government is the problem, not the solution," as well as his anti-union rhetoric. From that time to the present, conservatives have invested a great deal of time and effort perpetuating Reagan's anti-government message, trying their level best to indoctrinate the entire society with the belief that these ideas are 'received wisdom' that cannot be challenged.

The Affordable Care Act, if it is implemented successfully, and people find that it offers some really helpful benefits for them, will effectively undermine that 'received wisdom' conservatives have been trying to peddle for the last three decades. And that, I believe, is what they are really afraid of, and is the reason behind their desperation.