Fear monger much Lady McCheney? I'm not wild about this health care bill either, but this is ridiculous. Think Progress has more--Matalin slurs health reform advocates as ‘health care jihadists.’.
Matalin has employed the concept of “holy war” in her political debates before. On Meet the Press in 2006, she attacked David Gregory for going “on a jihad” in covering the Vice President’s accidental shooting of his friend Harry Whittington. Gregory responded, “That’s an unfortunate use of that word, by the way. This is not what that was.”
Transcript via CNN.
KING: Let's start, David Axelrod says we're on the one-yard line deep in the red zone. Mary Matalin, you don't like this bill, but are Democrats going to get it?
MATALIN: They are and they're going to get something more, a big loss in the midterms. We've been saying this all along. The more they get, the rougher it's going to be for them in the midterms. And they've made that political calculation that their sacrificial lambs are going to be the blue dogs and they're going to lose all those blue dogs and they may even lose their majority and so be it. They've been on this jihad for 70 years, and they're going to throw over all competitive seats to do it.
And I don't know what kind of party that is. That leaves left and the Democratic Party, the urban centers, this is tyranny of the minority. Two-thirds of the country don't want this. And one-third of these jihadists, these health care jihadists do. I guess that's how democracy in the Obama era works.
[...]
KING: Do you have any doubt Senator Nelson gets a good deal from Nebraska? Senator Landrieu got a good deal for Louisiana? You were both here a couple of weeks ago, said the Republican governor wanted that so it's not this horrible Democratic thing. Could you have any doubt that if there's six or eight or 10 of these deals, that two or three years down the road, when that money kicks in, that senators from Arizona and Illinois and Iowa and anywhere else are going to say where's mine?
MATALIN: Remember this. There are no red states. There are no blue states, there are only the United States. No, it's every state for himself. The country is more divided. It is less transparent, less accountable. Of course all these other states are going to get -- which just makes it a bigger piece of what it is which is wealth transfer. Essentially what's happening and what Senator Nelson can speak for himself when he comes out is he's never going to have a Medicaid increase. Well no other state is going to stand for that.
And this is worse, and the American people have said that this is worse than doing nothing, and the White House actuary said it will raise costs to the premium -- raise premiums, raise the debt. It will not cover everybody. It does not bend the cost curve. And furthermore this is the worst thing. They're going to strip out all the few good things that are in there and the entrenched things will stand. That's what's happened with every entitlement jihad from the '30s and the '60s and that's what happened.
