What could be more shagadelic than the constitution of New Hampshire? It guarantees the people’s right to overthrow the government in revolution. Now the Tea Party Movement doesn’t know very much, but it knows its rights – and on the matter of revolution it agrees with New Hampshire. Of course, when the government blows the jiminy jilickers out those diaper-hatted A-rabs in Eye-raq, we should celebrate it. But when it provides subsidised healthcare to the working, starving poor, then holy smokes! Get the placards down to Washington, chant some slogans and prepare to get mediaeval on Barry Soetoro’s drab half-white ass.
Not that the Tea Party is anywhere near sanity: most of them join the 18% of Americans who think Obama’s a Muslim. Who cares about what that lot think? Obama’s done a good job. He continues to. The mistakes he’s made pale into short-term prudishness when confronted with the strength of his achievements.
Alright, he’s failed in Afghanistan. Alright, he’s cocked up his bureaucracy. Alright, the economy is perilous. And yes, there’s no denying he’s made the deficit very very very big ($1.3 trillion; enough to buy seven NHS’s and still have change for a Royal Navy). America can basically get as much debt as it likes, but it still has to pay the interest. That bill will be paid in Democrat Congressmen in November.
That’s all very well, but in the long run Obama’s been the most revolutionary Democrat president since the icy ’60s do-badder Lyndon Johnson. (Johnson wasn’t a man to cross. He justified his own Civil Rights bill as follows: ‘this’ll keep the niggers voting Democrat for two hundred years’. Boom boom.) Obama’s healthcare bill, passed this March, changes the system entirely. In America private health insurers are the main way to get money for treatment. And these insurers have a right to refuse to give you healthcare on the grounds that you are ill – and I’m not even making this up. Insurers lose money on unhealthy people because they have to pay out to them, and make money on healthy people who don’t need to claim. No prizes for guessing who goes uninsured. Obama’s act will get rid of this horseshit and forces insurers to shell out for the uninsurable. Of course people still have to pay for their healthcare, but this is a big step into the twentieth century.
Obama wanted the bill to be a lot more radical, introducing proto-NHS state-funded health insurance. But he was defeated by the odious American system of government which basically stops anyone doing anything. All the same the reforms to health are pivotal. Combined with tax reform and environmentalism, they are a decisive departure from the days of Bush.
In Britain, the post-war Labour government introduced the NHS and the welfare state. The economy was disastrous at the time and Britain was haemorrhaging influence and wealth. These problems were short-term. The country recovered, and the long-term benefits of free health and social services are available for all to see today. That will be the effect of Obama; it will be what people remember him for. I hope.
But Republican victory in the Presidential election could turn the clock back. And that’s something that could easily happen. Sadly, although they’re desperately amusing, there isn’t much genuine mileage in making out the uber-right to be the rootin’, tootin’ gun-toters we all wish they were. The main problem for Bazzy O isn’t actually the bad, vocal minority of Tea Partiers. It’s the great, silent majority of Americans who’ll vote for the other guy, just so long as the other guy isn’t too mad. A moderate Republican, in other words. If moderates win the Republican nomination for 2012, Obama is pretty darn screwed as of now. So if you’ve got a vote in the Republican primaries- and why not?- vote for Basil Marceaux. Or indeed Palin. Just anyone who isn’t Mitt Romney.
Sod the pessimists. Obama’s done us proud. In any case he’s less than halfway through his term. If he loses the Congressional elections in November, then he can just veto everything the Republicans introduce. He’s achieved what he wanted: make America a more equal society.
Christine O’Donnell, the uber-rightwing Tea Party candidate in Delaware, remarked some years ago on how masturbation was morally wrong. Hypocritical, given that her policies are a pile of wank. But charitably cuckoo, and against these people Obama will romp home. Then he can set about his secret life-long aim: converting America to Islam.
