Think Progress is reporting that South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said in a July 17, 2009 interview with Gordon Liddy that he "aims to “break” the President by defeating health reform. He also said recently that he prefers to cause “pain” to his fellow legislators rather than working on reform".

After looking into things a bit, it appears that Senator DeMint may be more worried about causing himself some pain. According to OpenSecrets.org, he has received contributions from the Insurance, Health and Pharma groups to the tune of about

$400,000 in the past year. A little further digging revealed that 34% of South Carolinians under the age of 65 (approximately 1.3 million people) are uninsured, this according to FamiliesUSA.org, Breaking this down even more, it appears that South Carolina’s Hispanics and African Americans bear the brunt of this hardship.

Now, the deal is: It should surprise no one that the Senator wants to equate anything that is going to take $400,000 dollars out of his pocket as National Socialism or any other kind of -ism. The real tragedy is that for a mere $3.25 per uninsured South Carolinian, or about the cost of a gallon-and-a-half of gas, the Senator’s contributors can count on him to try to break the President and cause pain to his fellow legislators while trying to defeat health care reform.

That’s what I call a real bargain.

© 2009, Mac Williams. All rights reserved.

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