BY KAREN WEBB

There is only one thing to say about last week’s exchange between Mitt Romney and Jay Leno: “What incredibly plu-perfectly cruel and inhumane person would vote for this idiot.”

The only problem is most of the GOP agrees with this tortured logic when discussing the lives of people they neither understand, nor want to understand.

What is really sad is Mitt is the best of the lot.

Jay: What about pre-existing conditions?

Mitt: Yeah.

Interpretation: Mitt is doing his best to sound caring, but with all those millions he can’t buy compassion, sympathy or empathy. They never were compassionate conservatives, but they are now taking it to infinity and beyond.

Jay: I know people who could not get insurance up until this ObamaCare and now they are covered for pre-existing conditions. I mean to me that, and children and people with pre-existing conditions should be covered.

Mitt: Yeah, people who have been continuously insured, let’s say someone has had a job for a while and insured and then they get real sick and they happen to lose a job or they change jobs they find, gosh, I have a pre-existing condition I can’t get insured. I’d say no, no, no, no.

As long as you have been consistently insured you ought to be able to be insured going forward. People with a pre-existing condition, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance.

Interpretation: Mitt is saying that only those who can afford to have been continuously insured deserve to live. It is the same old GOP health plan: “DON’T GET SICK.” Put that toddler to work so you can afford health care and then get sick. As long as you have been able to afford health care, you can get health care, maybe.

Jay: Well, suppose they were never insured.

Mitt: If they are 45 years old and they show up and want insurance because I have a heart disease, I say, hey, you guys we can’t play the game like that. You’ve gotta get insurance when you are well and so and then if you get ill you will be covered.

Interpretation: Mittie, don’t play no GAMES OF LIFE with people who can’t afford health care and he is not about to make it affordable. Making a fortune off the sick is one of those GOP platforms. The nerve of a guy to get sick if he can’t afford health care. Fella, you just need to start caring about Mitt’s friends in the health insurance industry and stop being such a cry-baby about feeding those kids.

Jay: Yeah, but there are a lot of people, I only mentioned this because I know guys that work in the auto industry and they are just not covered because they work in brake dust and so they have just not ever been able to get it and they get to be 30 or 35 and have never been able to get insurance before and so now they have it. That seems like a good thing.

Mitt: Well, look at a circumstance where someone is ill and hasn’t been insured so far, people who have done their best to get insured are going to be able to get covered. But you don’t want everyone saying, “I am going to sit back until I get sick and then go buy insurance.”

Interpretation: Mitt, you may do your own laundry on occasion, but we all know you could just toss that dirty stuff and buy the entire store. Jay is pointing out that his friends had money for insurance, but couldn’t get insured. I think Mitt is saying, if Jay’s friends can prove they had been trying to get insurance then under his plan they will be excused for not having any. Yeah, Mitt, they are just sitting back waiting to get sick so they can play your life and death GAME.

Justice Antonin Scalia says health care is cruel and unusual punishment, but he doesn’t specify for whom. I am pretty sure he is talking about the billionaires in the health care industry.

The GOP Health Care Plan insists that you buy health care when you are healthy and can’t afford it or when you are unhealthy and can afford it they won’t cover you.

You know, let’s make it clear: You should have bought health care when you could afford it, but due to your job you were uninsurable by industry standards and now that you are sick and can afford it, you still can’t have it because you didn’t buy it when you were healthy and could afford it, but were uninsurable.

OK, now that we have made that clear, if you vote for anything with an “R” behind their name do not come to me when they say, “We don’t play this kind of GOP GAME OF LIFE. We spent eight years coddling the insurance industry, saddling elders with a pharmaceutical plan that would gag an MIT grad and doing nothing about health care and now we really don’t give a damn about the bread-winner of your family getting sick because we know he was out drinking Starbucks when he should have been working double shifts at Starbucks along with his other job to pay huge premiums that the insurance companies can raise anytime they feel like it.”

All of this and they don’t want anyone even suggesting they buy health care, but they want to tell women they must get and pay for medical procedures that are not necessary.

They don’t even want you to get a break on birth control, but it is probably because there are a lot of rightwing, infertile couples who want your kids.

They want to tell gays who they can marry and they still preach limited government, but they only mean it with regards to their businesses.

– Karen Webb lives in Moore, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer