Damn the GOP -- Analysis of the analysis

I just received the GOP’s email summary of today’s gubernatorial debate. What a bungled opportunity. Here are a couple things that jump out at me (I have yet to listen to the debate).

Here’s how the GOP quotes Mike Hatch on health care – “We haven’t had reform of the system… the HMOS are not accountable.” …. “Instead of importing Canadian drugs we should be importing the Canadian system …”

And how does the GOP respond to what ought to be an extremely frightening statement? They rush for Google to find every negative and conflicting statement Hatch ever made on health care. Call me crazy, but maybe the GOP should be doing some analysis on the Canadian system and why telling us why importing it is really, really, dumb.

Wake up guys.

Importing Canada’s system or implementing “Medicare for all” or duplicating the Massachusetts plan or some other form of single-payer universal health care is an appealing dangerous idea.

It’s appealing because people are feeling the pinch of health care costs. Hatch, Peter Hutchinson and Democrats in general are offering plans to address that pain. Parts of those plans even make sense, but the dowside will, literally, kill a lot of us. The GOP, instead of pushing free market health care ideas, is Googling like mad to find negative things to say about Mike Hatch. Does the GOP have a clue?

Hatch on higher education – “The cost of higher education is not affordable. … I want tuition costs lowered.”

So the GOP drudges up some stuff on Ventura budget vuts supported by Hatch. Great. How is that going to address tuition costs? Hatch wants lower tuition. Does the GOP want higher tuition costs? No, then how does the GOP propose to control tuition cost? Again, if I’m feeling the pain of higher tuition, then my choice is a bad guy with a plan or good guys without a clue. Duh.

I’d skip the business climate issue, (“… The fact is the government should service people and businesses”) because this issue should be a gimme for the GOP given Hatch’s record, but come on, guys. How about a little analysis instead of just a bunch of headlines. Okay, Hatch is anti-business. How are Republicans pro-business? How does pro-business compare with pro-consumer? There are more consumers than business owners. Maybe the GOP should give them something to work with besides Mike Hatch sucks.

The GOP response to Hatch take on K-12 education (“The biggest issue facing our state: students do not have the financial structure to go on to higher education”) is my biggest disappointment. The GOP’s Google mentality pulls up Ventura K-12 cuts from a budget that Hatch supported. Is that all you got?

Hatch is so wrong on this issue. The biggest issue facing K-12 education is the achievement gap between white students and students of color followed closely by student readiness or lack there of for college even when they graduate. Third is funding – not as in more money, but as a simplified system for distributing education funds and measuring the return on education dollars invested.

How is the GOP going to address those real K-12 education problems? Hatch is defining the problem in terms of dollars, and it’s not a dollars problem, but the GOP lets him get away with it.

Aggggghhhhh.

I’m tiring of bashing the GOP, but sooner or later they got to give us something positive – something with a little more substance than 14 pages of philosophical conflicting bullet points or educational silliness like the bureacratic mandate of 70 percent of funds to the classroom. "We're not Democrats" isn't going to cut it.