Conservatives Flip-Flop On Individual Mandate Out Of Political Expediency

So let me see if I have this straight.  The principle most offensive to the TPM ultra-conservative types is the individual mandate.  It is the idea that the government would require an American citizen to buy something she might not want to buy.  I suspect most find the regulation of insurance company atrocities, such as dropping coverage when a person becomes sick, denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and charging higher premiums for women, somewhat acceptable.  It is the mandate that they hate.  HATE.

But what we are learning now is that conservatives almost universally supported the individual mandate as a sensible free-market alternative to the Clinton health care reform.  In fact, conservatives thought up the idea in the 70s and supported it for decades.  Mormon conservative hero and potential frontrunner in the 2012 Republican primary Mitt Romney passed an individual mandate as governor in Massachusetts and had this to say about it:  "We can't have as a nation 40 million people — or, in my state, half a million — saying, 'I don't have insurance, and if I get sick, I want someone else to pay.'"

So when conservatives propose a health insurance mandate it is a nice free-market approach and a furtherance of that bedrock American principle of individual responsibility.  But when liberals propose a health insurance mandate it is socialism?  It is so horrible that they must resort to violence and intimidation?  It is an assault on our personal freedoms and liberties, and an indication of the decline of America itself?

What we are really seeing is that some conservative leaders have learned that appealing to raw emotion is a more successful political strategy than appealing to reason and compromise.  These are people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin, who are more interested fame and power than in solving real-life problems of Americans.  These are not intellectual conservatives who maintain a certain set of core beliefs and who are attempting to raise the level of discourse in our nation.  There are plenty of them still around, though their voices are being drowned out.  These are con artists who appeal to the lowest common denominator, who lower the level of political discourse, and who will do or say anything as long as the political winds are favorable.

So as I sit and listen to all the doomsday predictions associated with health insurance reform, listen to all the anger and the ignorant use of the words like "socialism," I put no stock in it at all.  They are led by hypocrites who are purposely arousing their emotions and who have no core political principles.  They only know that they will oppose anything proposed by Pres. Obama because it is good for them personally.  They have no ability to compromise and, as a result, they are bad for America.