225px-Alan_GraysonWe have been assaulted for more than a year with the most extreme claims about the President. He was a secret extremist Muslim, we were told. No, a radical black supremacist Christian, wait, a socialist terror sympathizer. When he won the election last fall, I was stupid enough to believe that the rhetoric had peaked. Hah!

When he proposed the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, he carefully adhered to his campaign pledge of apolitical politics. He sat the “stakeholders” (vested financial interests, not the patients whose lives were at stake) at the table and gave away the winning run before kickoff. Single-payer proposals that would have improved standards of care, controlled costs, and guaranteed universal access were abandoned in favor of a wishy-washy “public option” that would accomplish none of those things. He declared again and again his intention to reach a “bipartisan” deal with Republicans in Congress, bending over backwards to avoid pissing off conservatives.

So, of course, town halls across America were surrounded by gangs of lunatics toting guns, warning of looming totalitarianism, and comparing our soft-spoken moderate President to Hitler. The lunacy was not limited to the parking lots, either. Republican lawmakers were gleefully spreading sleaze about “death panels” and decrying Democrats’ non-existent intention to “pull the plug on Grandma.” So much for the tone.

So, when Congressman Alan Grayson suggested that the Republicans’ Health Care Plan was for sick people to “die quickly,” I was shocked to hear Republicans complain about the incivility of it all. What national debate on health care were they watching? Perhaps they had stepped through an inter-dimensional rift from a parallel Earth where they had not spent the summer inciting domestic terrorists to kill Democratic politicians.

Congressman Grayson’s remark was relatively civil, by the standards of this debate. It was also relatively factual. Although prone to superficial stunts, Mr. Grayson’s commitment to his constituents is undeniable. He is rightly concerned about a monstrously dysfunctional health care system that is simply unsustainable.  The loss of life from our broken system is equivalent to 15 9-11s every year. This is an absurd and intolerable situation, and the Congressman’s edgy rhetoric is more than justified. While the Republicans chase phantom nightmares of totalitarianism, Americans are subjected to a kafkaesque labyrinth of insurance company rules as they watch their husbands and wives, their children and brothers, their fathers, sisters and mothers die when basic medical care could have saved their lives.

Courageous Progressives like Mr. Grayson are to be congratulated, but more importantly, they need our support. Please make sure the Republicans can’t knock him off next year by donating today.

Forget bipartisanship. To steal from Aaron Sorkin, our job is not to end the fight. It’s to win it. Hundreds of thousands of lives are in the balance, as is the economic security of our nation.