E-Mail This Article to a Friend Granite state of mind Judd Gregg and John Sununu go MIA on an anti-lynching measure. Plus, Romney’s politicized health plan, and demonizing Durbin.

Folks in New Hampshire like to claim that things have changed since the days when the Granite State was home to one of the most reactionary political cultures in the country. Republicans, according to this line of argument, are now moderate and reform-minded — witness the whupping that John McCain gave George W. Bush in the state’s 2000 presidential primary. The Manchester Union Leader, though still staunchly conservative, no longer runs headlines like KISSINGER THE KIKE?, as it once labeled an editorial on Henry Kissinger’s appointment as secretary of state. And certainly New Hampshire has a better record of electing Democratic governors in recent years than does Massachusetts.

But then comes a moment like last week’s vote in the US Senate on a resolution apologizing to lynching victims and their descendants. Just eight senators — all Republicans — failed to sign on as co-sponsors. Among them were New Hampshire’s Judd Gregg and John Sununu, making the Granite State one of only two in which both senators withheld their explicit support. The other, not surprisingly, was Mississippi.

Spokespersons for Gregg and Sununu say the senators did manage at least to vote for the legislation, which passed on a voice vote. But Sununu went so far as to tell the New York Times that it wasn’t necessary for him to "co-sponsor every nice piece of legislation." With those words, Sununu demonstrated a grotesque misunderstanding of the terrible effect that racial violence has had on this country. Sadly, Gregg’s and Sununu’s inaction was not unique for New Hampshire: in 1999, it became the last state officially to recognize Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a holiday.

This past Tuesday, jurors in Philadelphia, Mississippi, convicted an 80-year-old Klansman, Edgar Ray Killen, in the 1964 killings of three civil-rights activists. Killen was found guilty of manslaughter — a landmark, although a first-degree-murder verdict would have been more appropriate. Along with the anti-lynching resolution, the verdict represented a historic coming-to-terms with a dark chapter in American history. It’s too bad that Gregg and Sununu don’t get it. New Hampshire voters deserve senators of nobler character, and should send both of them packing at re-election time.

An unhealthy plan

Since last November, Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been talking up a health-care proposal to cover an estimated 500,000 uninsured residents. It makes political sense: as he spends more and more time on the presidential campaign trail, he desperately needs a substantive achievement to flesh out his thin résumé. Unfortunately — and, as is generally the case with Romney — his plan is a nonstarter, with something for everyone to hate.

Take his latest rollout, which he explained in an op-ed piece published in the Boston Herald this past Tuesday. Other than expressing the laudable goal of getting poor people to sign up for Medicaid, Romney offered little but smoke and mirrors. For the working poor and the lower middle class, Romney touted cut-rate insurance programs, limited employer mandates, and placed heavy emphasis on buzz phrases like "personal responsibility." For taxophobic Republican-primary voters, Romney offered this: "There is no need for new or increased taxes."

The Romney plan uniquely combines the unworkable with the inadequate. By refusing to support even an increase in the cigarette tax, the governor has ensured that his plan will fall far short of what is needed. Yet, by requiring employers to participate, he risks opposition from the business community. Another idea, which Romney unveiled in a speech on Tuesday, would require most residents to buy health insurance — an intriguing notion, but one that could amount to punishing the victim depending on how it is implemented.

The uninsured are real people with real needs. And they deserve a health-care system that treats them with the same dignity and respect as what’s available to more-affluent members of society. The legislature should reject Romney’s attempt to use the uninsured as props for his presidential campaign.

Tortured logic

Democratic senator Dick Durbin, of Illinois, should have engaged his brain before he compared the abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to the atrocities perpetrated at Nazi death camps, in the Soviet gulag, or on the killing fields of Cambodia. He was right to apologize. But though his analogy was stupid and utterly offensive, he was absolutely correct that the United States has shamed itself — and set back the struggle against terrorism — by engaging in what any reasonable person would agree is torture.

Thus it is even more disturbing that Durbin’s remarks have become the latest cause célèbre inside the right-wing echo chamber. Never mind that, just a few weeks ago, Republican senator Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, compared the tactics of filibustering Democrats to those used by the Nazis to gain power in Germany in the 1930s. Within hours of Durbin’s remarks, Fox News, right-wing radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Jay Severin, and conservative bloggers demanded that he be stripped of his post as the Democratic whip, even subjected to formal censure. Millions of Americans today are convinced that Durbin’s lapse is the most important matter facing the country.

As a lesson for everyone in Congress on what constitutes unacceptable rhetoric, both Durbin and Santorum deserve condemnation for their glib and incendiary analogies. But perhaps what was most offensive about Durbin’s statement was this: he managed to divert attention from human-rights abuses at Guantánamo and other detention facilities. The issue Durbin raised was serious. It should not be obscured by a torrent of mindless right-wing rhetoric.

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