And now Utah goes off the deep end too

Down with Bennett!

Remember, socialist means even being marginally supportive of "liberals" or "Democrats", regardless of what it is that they are trying to accomplish.

So by that logic it does mean: co-sponsoring a radical but market driven alternative to health care reform that was promptly buried and forgotten by conservatives, the self-styled "friends" of the free market, when the time came to pony up an idea (Tort Reform!, really...that's what you got? Yet another state intervention is what that looks like to me at this point). Even though, strangely enough, this idea was a MARKET BASED ALTERNATIVE. Much more so than the present. For example under Wyden-Bennett, Medicare and Medicaid were abolished. Not cut. Gone. Kaput. The guys who came up with that are a Democrat from Oregon and a Republican from Utah. Their idea successfully killed one of the biggest and most socialistic enterprises of the federal and state governments of the US over the last 50 years by replacing it with something cheaper and more market friendly. Both of them are potentially losing their Senate seats this term. Why?

Obviously they must be Socialists. One because he's a Democrat and the other because he decided to cooperate with a Democrat.

I'm sure there are local considerations and reasons to vote against Bennett for Utah (apparently his TARP vote?, which... considering many of the GOP leadership voted for, is kind of an odd choice. Updated: he voted down the stimulus like almost everyone else with an R after their name. So it's really just TARP. Which was broadly popular among R-branded peoples until it actually took place and they realized how unpopular it was). Ezra's a health care wonk (who isn't by now of those who actually followed the thing to passage from its inception during the primary campaign at least, if not back in the mid-90s or mid 70s or mid 60s...) and this alternative bill was a pet project that didn't get off the ground for those of us who were indifferent to the outcome of the actual political process (preferring the theoretical approaches of better designed policies). But the fact that Bennett had to clam up over it and could not even trot this out as an alternative to the plan as written in Congress seems absurd at the least. Wyden at least had the luxury of taking out NYT op-eds and fighting with his own party for some shreds of his cost-control ideas and so on from his original bill.