GOP State Rep. Calls For ACA Repeal With 'Manly Firmness'
Credit: Pitch.com
February 10, 2015

Oh, there's so much wrong with this I hardly know where to begin. A Republican state representative earned a much-deserved smackdown from Senator Claire McCaskill for this:

State Rep. Mike Moon wants the Affordable Care Act repealed and according to a House resolution he’s sponsoring, it will take the proper application of “Y” chromosomes to get the job done.

Moon’s resolution details all the problems he sees with the law, from passage to implementation. The resolution asks members of the Missouri House to “insist that each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation endeavor with ‘manly firmness’ and resolve to totally and completely repeal the Affordable Care Act, settling for no less than a full repeal.”

Senator McCaskill didn't take kindly to the call for man parts interfering in health care:

"I don’t think you prove your manhood by kicking folks off their health coverage and once again letting insurance companies discriminate against women and sick people," McCaskill said in a Tuesday statement.

Moon says he didn't mean anything by it other than the obvious: Manly men do manly things.

“It is just like going to war," Moon said. "You want a soldier to fight like a man. If a woman is in the trenches, you want them to fight like a man, too.”

What, pray tell, does it mean to fight like a man? More specifically, what did he mean by saying it should be repealed with "manly firmness?" Does he realize millions of men will have to pay for those boner pills to be manly and firm if they repeal the ACA?

Moon lifted the phrase from the list of grievances against King George III in the Declaration of Independence where the king has "dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."

But as Senator McCaskill says, maybe it's time to update our language to the 21st century.

"It probably just is not a very effective way to communicate with a wide swath of people," she told TPM Tuesday afternoon. "Using a phrase like 'manly firmness' is probably not gonna — he said it was a historic reference, well he's referring to a point in time when women were chattels and didn't have the right to vote. I think we can update our vocabulary."

While we're at it, let's update our thinking. This idea that health care access for all is somehow an impingement on liberty is magical thinking, just like the idea of manly firmness.

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