Representative Michael Burgess' Town Hall slip-up

On Saturday, August 15, 2009, Representative Michael Burgess, Republican from Texas, held a town hall meeting in Denton, Texas. It seems that it was mostly civil, with the usual shouting matches. What I saw, mostly, were a bunch of senior citizens (on Medicare, I would wager) protesting the idea of the rest of us getting any such kind of health coverage. What I also saw was a woman ask Mr. Burgess why the Republicans, when they were in charge, didn’t pass some kind of health care reform. His reply was long and sidestepping, as politician answers tend to be. But what stood out to me was one statement in particular.
Rep. Michael Burgess-"...The Republicans have, and I’m not supposed to talk about this, the leadership, my leadership doesn’t like it, But it’s easier to poke holes in someone else than it is to defend your own product. We actually have a bill, which I participated in writing and we worked late into the night and many nights late in the spring to find something that would be, uh, you can’t fight something with nothing, and we needed a bill..." Excuse me? I mean, we all know this, but to have someone in the party actually admit at a town hall meeting that the agenda is not to make a better bill, but simply to defeat one… well, that is just un-American. Or not, I don’t know.
"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said some weeks ago, about the President’s proposal for health care reform.
It seems to me that these guys are banking on their respective constituencies being too stupid to realize that they are not working for the people, but for their own, and corporate, gain.
So, given that maybe none of the bills being considered are the fix, maybe the Republicans should actually come up with something that will work. Or, would that be too much harder than simply poking holes in anyone else’s plan?
What is also interesting to me is that the "liberal" media has not covered this at all. I had to find this on Jon Stewart’s website. Local stations showed the question being asked, but cut away from the answer. CNN, who Rush Limbaugh often cites as the most liberal of the liberal, treated the exchange in the same manner. Apparently the media, who seem to have no problems covering (nonexistent) "death panels" or questions over our President’s citizenry, are afraid to show us exactly how the Republicans who supposedly represent us really think.

You can find the Michael Burgess exchange at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ue5S9ZFqv0