Landrieu worse for Dems than Vitter for GOP

Two people represent Louisiana in the United States Senate.One is a lying backstabber who sacrifices constituents' best interests by caring more about money than the voices of the people.The other cheated on his wife with a prostitute.Unfortunately for the citizens of Louisiana, today's critical debate over health care reform involves trying to please two camps. One group is the reluctant Republicans, who are stopping at nothing to poison a legitimate debate about the need for reform, lying about aspects of the bill that aren't even there.The other is the much smaller, consisting of conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats, under heat from their purplish-red constituencies for supporting anything President Obama proposes.David Vitter and Mary Landrieu belong to these two camps, respectively.But it's Senator Landrieu, not Vitter, who is the bigger disgrace to her party.On ABC's "This Week" last Sunday, Landrieu explained the point of health reform was to cut costs. She also said she was against a public insurance option.These two statements don't go together.Republicans are afraid a public insurance option would lead to a "government takeover of health care," as private insurance companies wouldn't be able to compete with a public alternative. More liberal Democrats are hoping the public option will act as a backdoor to a single-payer, "Medicare for All" system where everyone, regardless of race, creed or illness, would be covered if they get sick.If the health care industry were as concerned with getting the staggering number of uninsured off the rolls than they are with obtaining a profit, there wouldn't be private insurance "companies," only health insurance providers, which they pretend to be now.They cease to be "providers" when they throw people off the rolls when they get sick. The public option would be in place for people to go if they couldn't afford the already-too-high cost of health care, forcing insurance companies to lower their costs and, God forbid, lower their profit margins.This summer, we've seen the very worst of America. To get this straight early, protesting the actions of the federal government is not only expected, it's patriotic.But there's a thin line between voicing your concerns and nearly inciting a riot.There's nothing patriotic about bringing a gun to a town hall. There's nothing patriotic about equating our democratically-elected president's health care reform efforts with those of a certain Nazi fA 1/4hrer.You may not like Obama, but he's not about to kill six million people because of where or how they were born.That said, the Republicans are trying to pretend the outrage at his presidency is legitimate. Whenever GOP congressmen or senators say their supporters have a legitimate point in questioning where Obama was born, they're elevating hatred and, in many cases, outright racism to national prominence.When Joe Wilson screamed, "You lie!" at the president while America watched Republicans act like fifth-graders, it didn't seem shocking.Honestly, it seemed commonplace. As disgusting as it was, I was almost waiting for it.The actions of the Republican Party have made David Vitter irrelevant to the standing of his party. Whether it was his endeavors with a certain D.C. madam service or his ridiculous mailer he sent out trying to gauge outrage at Obama's policies, he proved himself to be a pompous hypocrite.But our pompous hypocrite is just one in a party made up increasingly of pompous hypocrites.Landrieu, on the other hand, was elected as a Democrat, the party responsible for passing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the fighting force behind today's health reform.This isn't to say she represents only the Democrats or President Obama. This also doesn't shield Democrats from legitimate criticism, like their timidity in acquiescing to Bush's war in Iraq or his trillions in tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans.Landrieu represents the state of Louisiana. As such, considering more than 20 percent of our state doesn't have health insurance--largely since Louisiana is the second poorest state in the nation--she should be acting for those who can't.She should support a public option and give Louisianans an honest choice.Otherwise, we should choose someone else.