Just for the record: I am an Independent. I have voted across the isle last November and plan to do so in the future because, to me, what matters is the person, not necessarily his or her political party affiliation.
And yet during the last week's GOP Presidential candidates' debate, I couldn't help but notice (and, hopefully, so did millions of viewers) that more than an hour of that 2-hour event had passed before we heard the word "health care" for the first time.
You guessed right: what those older white men had mostly talked before was war in Iraq (turns out, more than 3,000 American lives wasted in vain is not enough!). In between, they had a chance to talk about immigration (and very few of them had a clue what to do about it) and (sic!) the fact that "any human life is sacred" by denouncing abortions and the "pro-choice" position.
If CNN's Wolf Blitzer's brain were processing things a bit faster, he might have asked them all how their passion for preserving human life coexists with their fanatical support for the death penalty. But who cares, really?
That night, the moment of truth came when, after some 1+ hours, the word "health care" popped up. And none of the GOP candidates was able to spell out a clear plan for the health care reform. Instead, there was the usual mixture of old ideological cliches (like "no socialized medicine" etc.) and clearly incompetent bullshit ("I will have a plan...").
Are Democrats better on Health Care? To be honest, I'm not sure. They've screwed up on it more than once in the past. To this very moment, there is no single clear party position on what Health Care in the U.S. should be - universal or something else.
But these days Democrats show something Republicans don't: willingness to step over the ideology in the search of the truth. The are ready to admit that the answer to the the question "What kind of Health Care system does America really need?" may lie ANYWHERE. It may be Universal Health Insurance provided by the Government, it may still be the coverage provided by for-profit companies, or it may be something in-between. The Democrats, at least, are willing to explore it.
And the Republicans aren't. They continue to sit on their "anything but socialized medicine" stance and not because they truly believe so (many of them sure don't) but because it's one of their party's ideological foundation pillars. And it is the party bosses who don't want (and probably can't) recognize the fact that this pillar may be functionally obsolete.
The Republican Party is interested in bipartisan cooperation on Health Care issues only on the basis that their position is right. Such cooperation becomes fruitless the moment it begins for "arrogance is so much closer to the truth than prejudice".
And this is precisely why GOP can not and should not be trusted on Health Care.
