If this was Jeopardy, the question would be, “What is a phrase that you’ll never hear from a Republican politician?”  OK…for you purists…”never” should probably have been “seldom”, but would you at least grant that there’s a hard lean towards “never”?

The notion that government has a necessary role and responsibility for the health, education and welfare of its citizenry was unapologetically pushed over a cliff in the deregulating frenzy of the Reagan presidency and has been honed to razor sharpness by whatever ridiculous name the ultra-conservative murderers of decency are calling themselves these days.  Any government of, by or attempting to be for the people can only flourish when creativity and innovation are the foundations for policy and future growth.  The power-tipping result of American ingenuity during the half-century of invention known as the Industrial Revolution, catapulted us into rarified, global supremacy.  The good and evil that took us into space, gave us Earth-ending weaponry and created the processes by which we can, if only we’d choose to, move the world toward a hunger-free, disease-free, war-free planet have been squandered by the irrational need to monetize…everything.

The Affordable Care Act may have been the best the Democratic-controlled Congress could do at the time, but, although it was a start, it was too weakly committed to its purported purpose.  Our country would be stronger if everyone had access to government-provided healthcare, period, (do you actually have to say, ‘period’ if you then put one at the end of the sentence?).  The powerful Insurance Lobby thinks otherwise.  So, what we got are some worthwhile concessions wrapped into a multi-billion-dollar profit-based industry-written bit of legislation wherein your health and its care is a very low priority.  It absolutely needs to be better, but without removing the insurance companies, whose role is simply to actuate costs versus access simply to maximize profit, the math will never add up.  We all bore witness to the clown show version of “Repeal and Replace!”  Seven plus years of voting to repeal the ACA and then, given the unencumbered opportunity, not an inkling of a Republican idea other than to keep those previously mentioned concessions, (pre-existing conditions, child coverage to age 26, no caps), that their constituents would eviscerate them for removing.

Oh…and returning to that near-never position of my original thesis:  Trade…no plan, Tax Reform…nuthin’, Immigration…huh?, Infrastructure…Mar-a-Lago, Foreign Affairs…seriously, comrade?