Hitting back

Paleoanthropologists who have conducted extensive examinations of Alan Grayson, a member of the U.S. House from Florida, have concluded that Grayson is one of the few Democratic members of Congress who actually displays a working pair of testicles.

Grayson doesn’t realize — he obviously hasn’t learned the lesson yet from congressional leaders like Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid — that when you’re a Democrat you’re not supposed to ever stand up to the schoolyard bully and punch him in the nose when he persists in taunting you and pushing you around. You’re supposed to let the minority caucus beat up on you every day and block the passage of healthcare reform legislation.

But Grayson instead did something radical last week. He gave a short speech on the House floor that hit back at the other side in the healthcare debate:

It’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America . . . It’s a very simple plan. Here it is. The Republican health care plan for America: “don’t get sick.” If you have insurance don’t get sick, if you don’t have insurance, don’t get sick; if you’re sick, don’t get sick. Just don’t get sick . . . If you do get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: “die quickly.”

Grayson followed up that floor remark by appearing on a cable news show and saying this:

These are foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who think they can dictate policy to America by being stubborn. And I think the time is over. We had an election. That’s it. Now we have to move ahead in just the way the president wants us to.

Republicans professed to be outraged by Grayson’s comments, although they didn’t seem to display quite the same level of anger when Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” at Barack Obama during a presidential address to a joint session of Congress.

Rep. Tom Price, a Georgia Republican who has made untrue statements during TV interviews about some provisions of the healthcare reform bill, was among those who demanded an “apology” from Grayson.

Rather that submit meekly to the GOP demands and beg weepingly for their forgiveness, as Democrats invariably seem to do in these circumstances, Grayson effectively told Price to shove it straight up his rectum:

“I would like to apologize,” he said. “I would like to apologize to the dead.”

Citing a statistic that 44,789 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance, Grayson said, “That is more than ten times the number of Americans who died in the war in Iraq, it’s more than ten times the number of Americans who died on 9/11. . . . It happens every year.”

Grayson added in another apparent dig at the GOP, “We should care about people even after they are born.”

Grayson apologized one last time.

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner,” he said.

These are amazingly strong remarks from Grayson. If he’s not careful, he’s going to give people the impression that there are actually Democrats in Congress who have a backbone.