Spineless Ben spins and spins and spins...

Ben Chandler finally talked to the media about his shameful votes on health care reform.

Or should I say "vote", because apparently neither Jim Carroll or Halimah Abdullah felt that it was called for to ask him about voting for the biggest setback to women's reproductive rights in over 30 years. Which is.... odd, no?

Anyway, here's Ben Chandler's spin about being stuck in SUCH a conservative district full of pitchfork wielding teabaggers who hate people having affordable health care.

“We’ve got an older district, and here in central Kentucky, particularly in rural areas of the district, there was an enormous amount of opposition to the health care bill,” Chandler said in the interview.

He said he liked a lot of things in the reform measure, such as requiring insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and trying to insure more Americans.

But, Chandler said, “We need to bring down the costs — we need to bend the cost curve.”

Oh, really? And how would you do that, Ben?

He declined to say what would need to change in the bill in order for him to support it.

“I’d just have to see the whole thing and analyze it,” Chandler said. “I want to see the costs controlled, I want to see more people get insured, I want to see the quality of the health care people receive maintained.”

Wow, not only is he mimicking Republican talking points, he's mimicking their strategy of tearing Obama apart without offering any alternatives that would work.

Here's some more sage wisdom from Ben:

“Was this a political vote? To tell you the truth, I was going to get hammered either way,” he said.

Actually Ben, that's far from the case. The Republicans are going to hammer you either way, because that's what they do.

If you voted for... I don't know, what your own constituents in your Party wanted, they would have had your back and I think you'd manage just fine. See Dr. Garrett Adams, state coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program:

The lawmaker “underestimates his constituency,” Adams added.

“He runs more scared than he needs to,” said Adams, whose group supports a government-financed system with private health care providers. “I think his district…is more tolerant and more progressive than he gives them credit for.”

Instead, you have decided to curry favor with the teabaggers that astroturfed your office with phone calls. And I have to give a hat tip to them, because they exploited what is thought to be your biggest weakness: that you are a spineless wuss who cowers in fear at the slightest criticism.

And the question remains, because neither the Herald-Leader or Courier-Journal thought that it was worth asking:

Why is a self-described "pro-choice" representative voting to END PRIVATE INSURANCE COVERAGE OF ABORTION IN AMERICA???

Because unless he pulls a pathetic and dishonest excuse like Jim Cooper, there is no excuse.

P.S.- Jim Carroll did mention our little FB group:

But some progressive Democrats in the state already started a Facebook site called “KY Democrats who will never vote for Ben Chandler again.”

“Fighting Republicans is one thing. It's when we have to fight so called ‘allies’ that I want to scream,” one contributor wrote on the site.

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