A Lesson for The Party of Hell No

In reading Jill Quadagno's One Nation Uninsured, Why the U. S. Has No National Health Insurance, I ran across an interesting discussion concerning the American Medical Association, that I expect has applicability to the Republican Party.

According to Quadagno's research, in 1945, 75 percent of Americans supported national health insurance; by 1949, only 21 percent favored President Truman's plan because of the outright opposition of the American Medical Association.  But the opposition came at great cost to the AMA according to Quadagno's book.  She quotes several sources for these paragraphs,

"During the campaign, the AMA drew heavily upon physicians' cultural authority as experts on health issues.  By the end of the decade, the abuse of this authority for such blatantly selfish ends made the public increasingly critical of the AMA, perceiving it as a negative organization that was against everything.  The AMA had opposed aid to medical schools on the grounds that federal aid would lead to federal control.  The AMA had also helped kill disability insurance and had blocked measures to provide school health programs and medical care to veteran's dependents. People were especially outraged when the AMA paid the Reverend Dan Gilbert $3,000 to mail Protestant clergymen a letter calling national health insurance 'this monster of anti-Christ.'

"A lot of us laymen are fed to the teeth with the AMA's methods.  With its persistently negative approach to everything.  With its unvarying misrepresentation of the efforts other countries are making to solve the problem.  With its "crusade" and its "battle" and its vilification of the government, the public, and its own members who speak out." 

If this can happen to the AMA, can it not happen to the Republican Party?  Clearly they have borrowed from this history in their distortion and misrepresentation of health reform with their references to non-existent death panels, charges of a government take-over of healthcare, and threats of Armageddon.  

They voted unanimously to oppose passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, when even the American Medical Association had endorsed the legislation.  In addition, Republicans have worked to obstruct the extension of unemployment benefits for those most affected by the Great Recession, they have voted almost unanimously to oppose the fiscal stimulus bill that is helping to end the Great Recession, they oppose climate change legislation which can help us end our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and they seem poised to oppose the financial regulatory reform that is required to reduce the chances of the Great Recession occurring again.

And is all this occurring because Republicans, who inherited budget surpluses in 2001, then passed trillions of dollars of unfunded tax cuts, an unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit, two off-budget wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and passed on a trillion dollar annual deficit in 2009,  have suddenly gotten fiscal discipline?  Or is it, as Jim DeMint (R-SC) said about Republican opposition to health reform, "If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo.  It will break him."

At what point will the Party of No, or as they like to brag, the Party of Hell No, simply be seen for what it has become -- a persistently negative organization that is against everything for brazenly selfish ends?  Once in awhile, people vote against a candidate or a cause. More often, people want to vote for a candidate or cause.  Branding themselves as the Party of Hell No, and doing so for the primary purpose of regaining power, no matter the consequences to the country, does not seem like a winning political strategy to me.