He wasn’t as pithy as let them eat cake, but the sentiment is the same. What’s gone missing in the debate over a public option for healthcare (although when more the seventy percent support it, it’s hard to see how this qualifies as a debate) is that tens of millions of people already have a public option: it’s called Medicare. So, if you’re 65 or over, you get government healthcare. So why can’t I have the same options my parents have? One of my parents works so they can choose the employer’s private plan or Medicare. Why can’t I?

Having said that, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa really put his foot in it when he was asked why he (Grassley) gets such good healthcare and other working people don’t:

After sharing his family’s personal struggle with the burden of high health care costs, an audience member asked, “My question is… why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so better than my insurance?”

The question made Grassley cranky.

He responded, first, by suggesting the questioner “go work for John Deere,” since they “don’t pay anything” for their insurance plan.

When the questioner refused to let the senator wriggle out of answering the question, Grassley revealed how little he knew about his own insurance plan.

Another audience member had to help the senator out by describing the details of the plan. After she finished, the original questioner again asked, “Okay, so how come I can’t have the same thing you have?”

Grassley’s response: “You can. Just go work for the Federal government.”

To call this tone deaf would be an understatement. Just how out of touch with the rest of the human race do you have to be to answer like this? And why are Democrats scared of these morons? If they wanted to (and it’s pretty clear they don’t want to), they would capitalize on this.

It’s just another symptom of the complete dysfunction of our government. And that’s not a “I hates mah gummint” sentiment–the clowns who are running things have to be some of the most incompetent politicians I have ever witnessed. That or the most overtly beholden to campaign donors.

As dday said about Senate Majority ‘Leader’ Harry Reid:

I’m sure that other Senate Democrats would say that this [Reid's] style works well – for them. They don’t get pestered into votes they don’t like to take, they don’t have any consequences for their actions on the floor of the Senate.

But Lyndon Johnson just came back from the dead, read this profile, and stabbed himself in the heart.

The Democratic Party is the only political party in recorded history to reward their opponents.

And here’s the video of Grassley: