SCHIP, The Frosts, And Dogs Eating Dogs

I know I should finish the post I started about Blackwater last week (still sitting in draft) but there's been a string of nonsense spewing forth from the Bush Cassidy and the Dumb Ass Kids crowd that I can't ignore.

While the right half of the wingersphere falls all over itself regarding SCHIP and the notorious Frost Family (trying desperately to revive Reagan's famous "Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen" strawman), here's a picture of the Frosts in front of the $263K mansion they share with their four kids:


I mean, come on people... how transparent does this shit have to be before y'all can see through it?

It's like this: Any time a program with the slightest whiff of socialism emerges, the mighty right raises the specter of the Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen to quickly whip up some outrage against it. It's like they're trying to inoculate their ideology against populist pathogens.

That's some pretty intellectually dishonest bullshit.

It's perfectly respectable for conservatives to remain true to their small government principles but in doing so they must also accept that there are consequences in their dog-eat-dog world order. They must admit that dogs get eaten. Everyone may not agree that it's okay for dogs to get eaten but at least then we can argue the idea honestly.

For conservatives to conveniently insist that there are no real consequences -- to insist that there are no doomed dogs or that they were just trying to rip everyone off anyway -- well, that's just about as dishonest as it gets. In fact, it's downright sleazy.