Lean Left

The oh so serious former speaker said this about the health care bill:

Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill “the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times,” Gingrich said: “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Gingrich is right. The Civil Rights Acts did shatter the Democratic coalition.  It drove a wedge between racists and the rest of the party.  And the GOP was able to use those racists to win in areas they hadn’t had a prayer of competing in just a few years ago.  It gave them probably thirty to forty years of political dominance.  But it was all based on the racists leaving the Dems and joining the GOP.  Nice of Newtie to admit that.

And I don’t think you would find a single Dem today or who was alive back then and stuck with the party who would change a single thing about those votes.  If HCR is half as beneficial to the country as Civil Rights has been then it is worth whatever price we may have to pay electorally.

But I doubt we will pay much of a price: I cannot wait to see the ads pointing out that Rep So and So wants to open the Medicare doughnut hole back up or allow insurance companies to throw children off the rolls or take away health insurance form hard working Americans so he can help Paris Hilton buy another yacht.