BY JEFF HAMILTON

The recent report of Sen. Tom Coburn’s Town Hall meeting in Oklahoma City reflects the waffling and subterfuge of some in the Republican Party and for that matter some in the Democratic Party, often called Blue Dogs.

Coburn told a woman, who was crying over the need for medical care for her husband she could not afford, that government could not help her; but his aides would try to help her. Are they not part of the government?

[By the way, she said her husband had a traumatic brain injury and her current insurance would not pay for it. That is not a surprise. I worked on TBI issues my full eight years – 1986-1994 – in the Oklahoma House of Representatives and continue to work on the problem. Her plight is real. That is another reason for health care reform.]

This Oklahoma senator, a front man for the insurance industry along with some Blue Dog Democrats, has said over and over that that a government sponsored plan is bad. If so, he should run like a scared rabbit from the health care plan for which he is eligible as a member of the U.S. Senate! [Some Blue Dog Democrats ought to be in friendly pursuit.]

Why does he not just call upon his hometown churches – as he suggested was the proper way to proceed – to care for him if he becomes seriously ill and needs an emergency room and major surgery?

The mantra “government is bad, but tax cuts for the wealthy are good” was chanted by Ronald Reagan and continues to be voiced by some Republicans and by some Blue Dog Democrats.

However, once there was a truly American Republican president who famously said that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

When did Tom Coburn and his kind quit listening to Abraham Lincoln?

– Jeff Hamilton, a former Democratic state representative, lives in Midwest City, OK