Chuck Grassley Had a Town Hall

Actually, Chuck Grassley had several town halls today but we'll just focus on the one I attended in Adel, Iowa this afternoon at 4:30.

Grassley didn't do much to change my mind about him. He's had 30 years to perfect the art of having it both ways with every issue and he didn't disappoint today. Naturally, most of the questions were about health care and he wasted a good three questions worth of time with his opening comments trying to weasel a reason for being one of the weaselly Republicans trying to work out a "compromise" with Senate Democrats on health care reform. The bottom line he said, was that Democrats are going to do this with or without us and we're better off to have some skin in the game and get our ideas out there. He said he's opposed to government-run health care, opposed to single-payer, opposed to rationing of health care and won't stand for any of it. He also pointed out that there is no bill yet, at least on the Senate side. There are several problems with Grassley's take on this. I came prepared to ask several questions and narrowed it down to one after Grassley's opening statement. I held my hand up for nearly the entire hour with short breaks to shake the blood back into it. In the end, the fine conservative guy directly in front of me got called on just in time for Grassley to end the meeting. He didn't get his question asked and neither did I.

The question I was prepared to ask the good senator was this: You can blather on all you want about not supporting government-run health care, the single-payer option and rationing. But the bottom line is that the only proposal on the table right now is the House bill and the House bill is the definitive blueprint for government control. It is in fact, all garbage -- every page of the 1017 pages -- and has to be thrown out so real options can be discussed. Obama supports this bill, Pelosi supports this bill, Reid has expressed his support for this bill and anything that comes out of the Senate is going to resemble the crap that came out of the House regardless of how much Grassley is peeing his pants to "compromise" with Democrats. In fact, had the Democrats and Obama had their way, Grassley would have been staring the House version – full-blown government-run statist health care complete with aborting the babies and killing grandma (or at least counseling her that she’s better off to let herself die) – in the face as the starting point for compromise when he returns from this extended break. How can you "compromise" on this bill when it contains nothing that even remotely resembles what needs to be done with health care? Why are you trying to "compromise" and more than likely give Democrats the majority of what they want which is to say crap, instead of standing up and screaming at the top of your lungs what the real solution is: Tort reform, lessening the restrictions on the sale of health insurance so that policies can be sold across state lines just like every other type of important insurance and an emphasis on health savings accounts for starters – in short getting the government out of health care and empowering Americans to make their own health care choices. And perhaps we could institute real measures to fix the government health insurance plans that don't work right now -- the VA, the Indian health care systems, Medicare and Medicaid?

There were a couple of whiners -- one standing right in front of me that wasted a good question with her pap that I or someone else with a brain could have asked. She claimed to be a devout Christian and a liberal – an oxymoron if I ever heard one. She had several sharp exchanges with the guy in front of me who made no bones about the fact that he thought she was a little lefty whiner (which she most definitely was). During one of these exchanges, I happened to catch the whiner asking the good conservative guy “have you ever broken your neck before?” At that point, I just had to interject my comments. I stepped up and told her “as a matter of fact, my son broke his neck and thank God for the insurance company that paid the vast majority of the $300,000 bill.” To which she downcast her eyes and put on one of those pouty expressions whiny liberals are so adept at using when they come face to face with indisputable facts. (This is what the passive-aggressive liberals do. The Type A liberals just start calling you names.)

While I heard some folks on the news say that they were convinced Grassley was standing up for conservatism, I was completely unimpressed. What he was doing was paying lip service to conservatism – trying to tell conservatives what he though they wanted to hear. He’s only a little bit less of the problem than Tom Harkin, our entrenched Democrat weasel (I mean senator) is. Both of these guys need to be thrown out of office on their backsides.