First Reads
Alan Grayson Won't Die
Candide’s Notebooks, Oct. 7, 2009

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U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the Orlando Democrat, is a GOP nightmare: a witty, fearless, straight-to-the-point Glenn Beck type, but with brains. Speaking on the floor of the House on Sept. 29, he briefly deconstructed what the Republicans claim is their health care reform plan. Grayson recalled seeing members of Congress wave pieces of paper in Obama’s direction during Obama’s address on health care to a joing session of Congress. “I heard from one of my colleagues that this is what they call the Republican health care plan,” Grayson said. But the pieces of paper were actually blank.

For good reason. The GOP health care plan is the anti-matter of reform. Grayson elaborated:

The Republicans' health care plan for America: Don't get sick. That's right. Don't get sick. If you have insurance, don't get sick. If you don't have insurance, don't get sick. If you are sick, don't get sick. Just don't get sick. That's what the Republicans have in mind for you, America. That's the Republicans' health care plan.

But I think that the Republicans understand that that plan isn't always going to work. It is not a foolproof plan. So the Republicans have a back-up plan in case you do get sick. If you get sick in America, this is what the Republicans want you to do. If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly That's right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.

If Jonathan Swift were a congressman, that’s the words he’d have used to sum up the GOP’s plan. Naturally, Republicans have been apoplectic over Grayson’s calling them out. He’d turned the tables on the GOP’s “death panel” demagoguery. Republicans were looking for a way to turn the table back on Democrats after their own Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” eruption against Obama. They thought they’d found it in Grayson’s little speech.

But rather than demonizing him, the GOP’s assault on Grayson is lionizing him. “Swagger,” the Orlando Sentinel reports, “courses through Grayson's every word, delivered in the accent of his Bronx upbringing and with the exacting nature of a lawyer who first made his name taking on -- and taking down -- contractors and war profiteers in Iraq..” The man whose district includes Disney’s Animal Kingdom knows how to handle suburbanized wildlife, which is really what the intellectual quotient of modern-day reactionaries adds up to. He’s showing it, delightfully.

Read Grayson's full comments from the floor of the House.