Schip-I’m Confused

I’m a bit confused about the uproar about the 12-year old Graeme Frost. This is a program that gets wide bipartisan support (including President Bush) and was originally passed by a Republican controlled congress (in 1997).  The family gets benefits under the current program (he was saying the program should be expanded), so why the uproar and stalking? It’s not like every current politician doesn’t do photo-ops (if you’re talking about Iraq, you talk in front of soldiers or have a general speak, same with senior citizens, …), so it can’t be that.  A typical argument is that the family is not poor–well duh, the whole program is for people who aren’t poor enough to qualify for Medicare.

The reason Bush vetoed the current proposal is that he says it expands the program too much (since I support universal health care, obviously I have no problem with this), but he supports the current program and so he implicitly supports the Frost family being in the program.  Remember it is easy to attack the message without attacking the messenger (this is a boy who has been permanently disabled and his sister is even worse).  The obvious intent of the uproar is to intimidate people who speak for the Democrats (ok, I guess I’m not really confused about the uproar).  Remember this the next time someone talks about venom on the lefty blogs–go read some of the righty blogs and you’ll see that they accuse the Frosts of criminal activity (I assume they’ll start calling them traitors soon, if they haven’t already).

The links to some of the uproar, click the link to Think Progress above.