As the vote on health care approaches, Republican lawmakers are attacking the legislation with increasingly bizarre and hateful comments. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), a far right lawmaker who has led much of the opposition to health reform, took to the floor of the House of Representatives last night to deliver a diatribe against health reform. Previously, Broun had compared President Obama to a dictator who would impose martial law. But last night, Broun out-performed his reactionary colleagues and even his own track record of absurdity. Bellowing into the microphone, Broun said that “if ObamaCare passes,” a “free insurance card” (which is not in the bill) will be “as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the “Great War of Yankee Aggression”:
BROUN: If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States — the Great War of Yankee Aggression.
Watch it:
Rather than simply distort the legislation by lying about how much it costs or how it will affect people, the right has tried to build opposition to health reform using racial, militant rhetoric. As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) compared health reform to a Japanese suicide bombing attack. And Glenn Beck has continuously referred to health reform as “reparations” for slavery. But Broun’s analogy between health reform and a “Great War of Yankee Aggression” might take the cake for its coded racism, historical revisionism, and outright level of detachment from reality. (HT: Media Matters Action Network)