In his attempt to become the conservative Wendy Davis, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spent all of Tuesday night and a significant portion of Wednesday morning railing against the Affordable Care Act, insisting his marathon address be called a filibuster even though he wasn't actually holding up any votes.
Along the way he read posts on Twitter, recited Toby Keith lyrics and, oddly, read Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham" into the public record (watch below), calling it his favorite book.
"'I do not like them, Sam-I-Am,'" Cruz said in his typically overserious tone. "'I do not like green eggs and ham. Would you like them here or there? I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere.'"
For anyone not fortunate enough to know the story, "Green Eggs and Ham" is a children's book about someone who refuses to even entertain the idea of trying something new -- that is, until he actually does, and then he loves it. "Green Eggs and Ham" is also the perfect explanation of Republican opposition to Obamacare.
However, Cruz's shoutout to the good doctor wasn't the first time he cut to the chase so effectively. Speaking to Republican shock jock Rush Limbaugh in August, Cruz claimed health reform would be almost impossible to kill once the insurance exchanges and subsidies are in full effect, mainly because people who think they hate Obamacare right now will end up really appreciating not having to pay exorbitant monthly sums to maintain a basic level of health care.
(On a related note, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has developed a great tool for helping people figure out how much savings they will see from The Affordable Care Act. Check it out here.)
"On January 1st, the subsidies are scheduled to kick in, and President Obama's strategy is very simple," Cruz said. "He wants to get as many Americans as possible addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar, because he knows that in modern times, no major entitlement has ever been implemented and then unwound."
"That's right," Limbaugh agreed. "He gets as many people signed up to those exchanges as possible, and it makes it all that much more difficult to take it away from them."
"That's exactly right," the Texas Senator replied.
In a sense, Cruz has been one of the most honest Republicans on this issue. Sure, he stood on the Senate floor and told blatant lies, claiming that letting poor people visit doctors from time to time will "destroy the 40-hour work week" -- and that Internal Revenue Service agents are going to decide whether your grandmother lives or dies -- but at least he's outed the true core of GOP opposition to health care reform twice now.
"'You do not like them, so you say,'" Cruz said Tuesday night. "'Try them, try them, and you may. Try them and you may, I say. Sam, if you will let me be, I will try them, you will see.' And this page, he is simply holding green eggs and ham on a fork preparing to bite them. 'Say, I like green eggs and ham. I do, I like them, Sam-I-Am.'"
In other words, Cruz and his backers, and indeed the financiers of the Republican Party, do not want the American people to get a taste of actual, affordable health care readily available to nearly all of us -- because if we do, we might just like it, which Ted appears to know very, very well.
This video is from CSPAN, aired Tuesday, September 24, 2013 -- Green Eggs & Ham
Photo: Screenshot via CSPAN.