A year after the passage of the heath care reform bill, former Rep. Bart Stupak says that strangers still curse him out on the streets and he remains worried about his physical safety. I don’t condone assaults on former members of Congress, no matter what kind of voting record they compiled in office. But I have to say that Bart Stupak brought this needlessly on himself. He decided to dishonestly suggest that the health care bill would subsidize abortion on demand when it did nothing of the sort. The end result of Stupak’s dishonest water-carrying for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was that he convinced the right that he voted for abortion funding at the same time that he infuriated the left by interfering with women’s right to have their reproductive health covered on their health care plans, even if they planned to pay for it out of their own pocket.
He guaranteed that everyone who had an even passing interest in the health care debate would hate his guts. And he did nothing to make a better bill. He just helped make the country even stupider than it already is. How do jackasses get rewarded for this kind of behavior?
These days, Stupak is still talking about healthcare, but as a fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. When his fellowship ends next month, Stupak plans to join up with a law firm in Michigan or Washington.
They get to teach our best and brightest.
So who exactly is yelling at Stupak in the streets? And it just goes to show, Stupak isn’t that bright. Because Republicans will never give him credit, ever.
I guess he’s getting hassled at the Sam’s Club or something. Who knows?
Judging by the comment thread at that site, a bunch of right-wing assholes.
Stupak is probably better off outside of politics if his skin is so thin he can’t handle constituents telling him he’s a jackass. Even more so if he can’t handle constituents who would never vote for him in a hundred billion years calling him a jackass.
he’s always been a punk.
Only for a semester or two, if they have to wait for their preferred lobbying position to open up. Which, of course, is part of what they’re teaching our best and brightest.
The objections to abortion funding of any kind in publicly funded health care date back decades and were part of the USCCB and other pro-life lobbying on the latest bills before Stupak’s organizing around his amendment. Stupak played the very critical the role of policy broker in this affair by organizing the votes capable of derailing health care reform under his leadership, instead of someone else’s, which he eventually played on the side of reform and against the USCCB hardliners. (Anyone from the pro-choice side could have done the same, but no one did.) As a result, it’s pretty clear that without Stupak’s actions, there would be no health care reform act at all yet. He’s a true profile in courage in Kennedy’s definition of the term.
That’s some impressive revisionism you got going on there.
Since I was there, care to explain what part is revisionist?