I was listening to President Obama's speech on health care yesterday. I really liked the way he delivered it and the fact that he gave far more specifics - enough to get critics in the Democratic Party (including myself at times) to stop complaining about any lack of specific requirements in the health care proposal.
Most of what I'm going to say has been written elsewhere (mostly on the Washington Post), so what I'm writing is a summary of Post writers' arguments.
Obama was specific enough, as said above.
Some people are saying that this is too little, too late, but as we have seen from the raucous/violent town hall meetings, this is the perfect time to call out the opponents for who they really are and really call for civility; if he gave the speech before the bad stuff happened, the speech wouldn't really have stuck and he would have had to repeat something later on to the effect of returning to some civility.
However, the moment during this speech to Congress was the loud outburst from Senator Joe Wilson (R-SC). When Obama expounded upon the idea that illegal immigrants would not get this kind of coverage, Wilson shouted, "You liar!"
This, of course, is among other happenings, like other GOP Senators rudely texting on their smartphones or holding up papers like signs like "Ironic" or "What Bill?" or the supposed GOP health care plan (basically, keep everything the same, which is why it's only 15-20 pages long).
Whatever shred of credibility the GOP had as a party of at least slightly respectable politicians was torn to pieces then.
These actions may have been legal, but they certainly weren't right. Did anyone see Democratic Congresspeople do the same to Bush or Republican Congresspeople do the same to Clinton? (No.)
This even just went to show that the GOP Congresspeople are just as crude, uncouth, loudmouthed, inflexible, and blockheaded as the gun-toting constituents who went to town hall meetings that these people represent. Furthermore, it just goes to show how out-of-touch the Republican Party is with the times and the people; though approval of Obama is dropping (but will probably spike a bit after this speech), nearly 60% of people still support health care reform of any kind (mostly what Obama and other Democratic Congresspeople are proposing). Truly, all the GOP cares about now is a political victory of some kind; Obama should give up bipartisanship in the sense that working with the GOP is futile, so he really should only work with the more conservative elements of the Democratic Party to achieve this "bipartisan" consensus.
And truly, the Republican Party has finally shown its colors once and for all as the extreme right-wing fringe party. Bye-bye, GOP!