With GOP healthkill bill, Citizens United comes home to roost

Sam Smith - The GOP healthkill bill, if passed, will do more domestic damage than any congressional action since the war on drugs. A couple of estimates are that about 45,000 people will die as a result of lost healthcare.

But what is also extraordinary is that only 17% of Americans support the GOP plan. Why does a major political party back a measure so lacking in popularity?

One answer is that Citizens United has really come home to roost - leading Republicans to think about money as an adequate alternative to intrinsic political appeal. Money buys advertising which allows you, as our president demonstrates on a daily basis, to lie with impunity.

This is not just a political change; it is a cultural one. If you don’t like a fact, you spend money to call it false news and it may well fade.

A recent case in point was reportedly recently by the Portland Press Herald:

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., announced that he could not vote for the legislation without revisions, singling out the measure’s long-term spending cuts to Medicaid as the reason for his opposition. The announcement caught some Republicans in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s orbit by surprise.

It also prompted a Republican super PAC to plan a seven-figure advertising campaign in Nevada to pressure Heller – raising the specter of an ugly intraparty fight that could serve as a harbinger of the political clashes to come during next year’s midterm elections…