An Open Letter To My "Moderate" Republican Representative

`God save thee, ancient Mariner !
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !--
Why look'st thou so ?'--With my cross-bow
I shot the albatross.

As you know from my missives to you on a variety of topics, you and I do not see eye to eye on many issues. Therefore you might be surprised to learn that I probably agree with you that the recently passed Health Care Reform bill is a stinker.

Now you might be thinking: “Great! The ‘stinker’ aspect of HCR is a winner, it even has my opposition constituents disgruntled” – and that a lot of folks like me will simply associate the stinkiness with your political opponents who voted for the bill. But, you know what? Some voters have the ability to be a bit more nuanced in our understanding of politics than when we voted for 5th grade class president, and I intend to make sure everyone I know is familiar with the following narrative of your role in HCR.

The background, and again, something on which I suspect we both agree: Americans currently pay more, a great deal more, per capita for health care than any other nation and yet more than 30 other countries have health care outcomes that outperform ours, and this situation is a serious and growing threat to the competitiveness of our economy, to say nothing of what it says about our values.

The leadership of your party, leadership you apparently willingly followed (considering your extensive voting record, public comments, and legislative actions and inactions with respect to HCR), opted to implement a strategy intended to do nothing less than simply ensure the defeat of any HCR legislation. This was in spite of your party leadership’s failure to advance any meaningful legislation to address the health care issues identified above during the many years when it was in control of the legislative and executive branches of government, the wide margin of victory by your political opponents - opponents who had made clear that health care reform was an agenda they would undertake - in the 2008 elections, the obvious attempts to forumlate the HCR bill in a bipartisan fashion, and the now painfully clear political miscalculation that the HCR bill would be defeated by a shameful partisan effort.

That is, when given the chance to improve a stinky HCR bill, to really do something on behalf of your constituents, even if it meant compromises on some issues, you instead squandered the opportunity in loyalty to party leadership whose judgement is now so obviously questionable. I will now and always think of and represent the stinking aspects of this bill as your legacy, a legacy you now so richly deserve.

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.