So much for anyone at Faux "news" pretending that they're anything even remotely resembling what you could call a reporter or a journalist. I know Fox likes to say Sean Hannity is part of the network's "opinion shows," but this segment with Sen. Rand Paul was over the top even for that.
This is how bad things have gotten at Fox. You've got one of their hosts openly harassing a United States senator about why he's not willing to shut down the government, damage our already fragile economy that's been slowly recovering and do real damage to real Americans out there who are struggling already.
Rand Paul is just as big of a demagogue as his buddy Ted Cruz, with similar political ambitions, but even he's got the sense to realize that shutting down the government might not be such a great idea. It seems the same can't be said for Hannity.
Here's Fox's slant on the badgering Hannity gave Paul: Hannity Challenges Republicans: 'Take a Stand Against ObamaCare':
Tonight on his show, Sean Hannity challenged Republicans to take a stand against ObamaCare, instead of waiting until after the 2014 election. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) helped out Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) during his 21-hour speech in protest of the president's health care law.
Hannity pressed Paul on why more Republicans aren’t joining him, Cruz and Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio. Republicans ran on repealing ObamaCare, Hannity pointed out, but now they fear that they’ll be blamed for shutting down the government.
If they wait until January 2015, Hannity predicted it will be “impossible” for them to change the law. Sen. Paul said he will not vote for one penny on ObamaCare, but he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to shut down the government.
Hannity challenged Sen. Paul, “Is this not worth taking a stand on?”
The senator responded that it could be a distraction at a time when the GOP is trying to grow the party. “Maybe we force them to get rid of the worst parts of ObamaCare. Maybe we don’t ultimately win. All I’m being is a realist.”
“I think what a lot of people want is for the Republicans to fight,” Hannity said. “It’s either you stand up and you risk what the media, and risk what the left will say about you being guilty about shutting down the government, or you wait ‘til 2015 after an election that you may or may not win and you still have Obama as president.”
Once again, these pundits are admitting that the reason they need to go after this now is that once the law is actually enacted and people find out what's in it, they're going to like it and it will be next to impossible for Republicans to repeal it later. The law is not single-payer, which is what most liberals would have liked to see enacted, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Republicans making their last stand to protect the profits of the insurance industry and their CEOs are going to lose this battle in the end, and they know it, but that's not stopping the likes of Cruz and his buddies from making a whole lot of noise before it's over.
I don't know what's going to happen over the next week with this standoff, but there's probably one thing we can count on. I don't think most of these members of Congress want to watch their own 401K's and investments blow up any more than the rest of us do, so if nothing else, pure selfishness if nothing else will likely prevail in the end.
What worries me is what price will ended up being extracted on the working class and the poor once again that they can get Democrats to agree to as ransom for them doing what should be a routine part of their jobs, which is allowing a law they really can't defund if they wanted to, to finally be enacted, and to allow the United States government to pay the bills they already voted for and racked up.
