So that's at least some percentage of repblicans/conservatives that don't think their own party can do anything about this (major) issue... What exactly is making those folks stick around? National defense? Family values? Mystery.

El Mystico: the word you're looking for is "identity."

Heh. Identity indeed. Good one, Matt.

It's also meanness. They feel compelled to stick around to tell us how wrong we all are about everything.

make the health insurance companies very happy.

And the Chamber and AMA AND of course their campaign finances.

What I don't understand is do the rethugs really think taking this hard line against public option-or reform in general-is going to get them back in from the wildnerness in 2010? Probably by then 80% of Americans will hate their guts.

This is hardly even about Dem Vs Republican at this point. Its more like Corporatists Vs Everyone else.

Well, it HAS given them a reason to talk about the evils of deficit spending and how much they despise it. It's one of the only lies they can still get away with.

Deficits only matter to them when democrats are in charge. When they're in charge, they can spend even faster than democrats and still pretend their the party of fiscal responsibility.

If anything, republicans has even less credibility on deficit spending than they do on health care.

a few years ago, John Stossell was on 20/20 doing a myth busters thing. One of the myths was the repugs were more fiscally responsible than dems. It was proven that they are not, but they are better at making the public think they do. He proved that under every administration run by repugs grew the gov't and spent more money than the dems. They are able to get away with this because the dems, for the most part, raise taxes to cover their spending and the repugs don't.

It has been a while, I don't watch ABC anymore. And nothing has changed.

Veralynn,

I used to watch John Stossell also. I'm not sure what party he belongs to, if any at all, but this guy taught me to always question conventional wisdom. He gave me so much insight into how the media hypes things up in the news, that I never believe what is first reported. I check multiple sources and wait until all the facts come in before I react or make judgment.