Conservative Hooey Update

Orrin Hatch, who isn't really that bad as Republican senators go, said this on the senate floor yesterday while he was fulminating against health reform:

This will become one more example of the arrogance of power being exerted since the Democrats secured a 60-vote majority in the United States Senate and took over the House and the White House. I dream some day of having the Republicans have 60 votes. I’ll tell you one thing, I think we would finally have the total responsibility to get this country under control and I believe we would. But we never come close to that. There are essentially no checks and balances found in Washington today just an arrogance of power with one party ramming through unpopular and devastating proposals on after the other.

What, exactly, does Hatch say? Not much, of course, but then we don't expect much from our senators. But what he does say is telling. If the Republicans had the power, he says, they would "get this country under control." In what sense, exactly, is the country out of control? I have no idea, and I doubt Hatch does, either. He just knows that the world is full of chaos and menace, and that order must be restored. But what, exactly, did the Republicans do when they had control of the Congress and the Presidency? Cut taxes and start two wars. What did either one have to do with control, order, or any such word? Republicans actually have no idea how to create a more orderly America. We have pretty much pushed getting tough on crime to the limit, we have cut taxes to the point that we are running a trillion-dollar deficit, and our foreign wars are doing us more damage than terrorists ever could.

And what does Hatch propose to do about our health care system, which is by far the world's most expensive but still leaves out 40 million Americans? Nothing. He has no proposals at all.