Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okl.) acknowledged the obvious on Friday, stating that the goal of his parliamentary shenanigans and the Republican Party as a whole is to "kill" the Senate's health care bill.
Appearing on a conference call with reporters organized by the Republican National Committee, Coburn said that, in the reverse situation, Democrats would deploy the same procedural tactics -- including demanding that the Senate read all 767 pages of an amendment, such as the single-payer amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sander (I-VT).
"I don't think we are doing anything they wouldn't do," said the Oklahoma Republican.
But the most telling moment of the call came when a woman named Judith Erickson (spelling may not be accurate), who claimed to be from the RNC, was granted the chance to ask a question and ended up leveling a lengthy anti-Democratic diatribe.
"I have been an international sales director for a number of years and I am well aware of the populations in all these countries that supposedly the radical leftist want to make us mimic," she said. "You got to Scandinavian countries -- they have a few million in population and we are 300 million plus. I don't understand why anyone is even listening to people who say 'Oh, well they have this in other nations.' Excuse me. We are the largest nation that hasn't done this and it is all for good reason. My concern is, why isn't this entire thing being stopped? Just because it looks like right now the Democrats will say, 'OK, we will take out this, this, this and this.' And it is only to put the framework in place of their totalitarian utopia state, which means they are going to control everything and only give it to those who vote Democratically or force people who aren't voting Democratically to become Democrats. I mean it is a whole debacle and it is nothing about health care. Why aren't we just totally killing this bill, end of story?"
Coburn replied without missing a beat.
"Well," he said. "I think it's a good question. First of all, we are trying to kill the bill. But [there are] parliamentary rules... plus they have 60 votes, and in the Senate 60 votes is an absolutely majority and you can do anything you want to do. We have done a fairly good job highlighting the fact that they are going to steal a trillion dollars over the next ten years from Medicare."