If
only to prolong his life (and to keep insurance rates lower for the rest of us)
Chris Christie might move to New York where The Nanny State limits
super-sizes.
Americans,
especially those who insist on their right to make unhealthy choices, increase
health insurance rates for everyone. Conservatives do not see their insistence
on unhealthy choices as essentially irresponsible to themselves and to The Body
Politic. This issue is paradigmatic of Republican foolishness in general.
***
One
of my most disconcerting epiphanies is that, very often, people lie most about
what they lack most.
They
do not preach in order to convert others but to convert themselves.
***
Chris Christie is NOT a truthteller
Is there anything worse than someone being obnoxiously boastful about a quality when it can easily be demonstrated he doesn’t possess it? Chris Christie insists, declares, brags and (more aggressively than perhaps anyone ever has) physically inflicts on us his “truthtelling.” But it’s phony, phony, phony.
I hate to be a broken record, but political courage means telling your base what it doesn’t want to hear. For Republicans, that means acknowledging the truth that taxes must rise above their historic levels as the boomers age and we double the number of people on Social Security and Medicare. You cannot qualify as a truthteller without speaking this truth. Christie fails this test. Paul Ryan fails this test. So does the rest of the GOP.
Republicans will tell only those truths that do not require abandoning the tax issue as a political club. But the idea of perennial tax cuts cannot be sustained any longer because of simple math and demographics. Once you realize this is the case, Christie’s entire truthier-than-thou tone and self-congratulatory demeanor become incredibly off-putting. I’m still waiting for the ambitious political truthteller who really does tell the truth.
By | 11:55 PM ET, 08/28/2012
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