Joni Ernst lets slip why Republicans feel they must stop Obamacare.

Courtesy of New York Magazine:

 Here Ernst, speaking candidly to supporters, gets to the root of conservative opposition: 

“We’re looking at Obamacare right now. Once we start with those benefits in January, how are we going to get people off of those? It’s exponentially harder to remove people once they’ve already been on those programs…we rely on government for absolutely everything. And in the years since I was a small girl up until now into my adulthood with children of my own, we have lost a reliance on not only our own families, but so much of what our churches and private organizations used to do. They used to have wonderful food pantries. They used to provide clothing for those that really needed it. But we have gotten away from that. Now we’re at a point where the government will just give away anything.” 

That’s the fundamental belief that motivates most, if not all, the conservative opposition: Health care should be a privilege rather than a right. If you can’t afford health insurance on your own, that is not the government’s problem.

This of course should be not at all surprising to those of us who have been paying attention.

Hell Bill Kristol said much the same thing about the Democratic plan for health care reform, back when Bill Clinton was in office: 

"Its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 1996. But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse--much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for 'security' on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government." 

And that, for Kristol, meant it had to be stopped at all costs: 

"The first step in that process must be the unqualified political defeat of the Clinton health care proposal. Its rejection by Congress and the public would be a monumental setback for the president; and an incontestable piece of evidence that Democratic welfare-state liberalism remains firmly in retreat."

The Republicans have been fighting against this law since before Barack Obama ever even entered politics, much less became the GOP boogeyman. 

I think we need to keep an eye on this Joni Ernst. She clearly is working without a filter, and I imagine that she is going to make enough gaffes to someday earn her place in the "Political Moron's Hall of Fame" right up there next to her idol Sarah Palin.