"Obamacare will murder your hope!"

As long as it's not a low number, I guess it'd be okay....

I can't decide if Ted Cruz is a lunatic, or a demagogue:

"I very much hope that when the House bill comes back all 46 Republicans stand together, stand united against Obamacare," Cruz said at a press availability while he was flanked by Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Marco Rubio (R-FL). "And I hope at the same time that some of the Democrats who decided today not to listen to their constituents hear the voices of the millions of Americans who are hurting and do the right thing and stand up and stop this train wreck, this nightmare of a law that is Obamacare."

 I've heard the ad a thousand times now (and I barely watch TeeVee).  I know the lies about Obamacare "killing jobs" and "raising premiums" and how nobody in America wants it to continue to be the law except Barack Obama.  What I don't understand is:  does he believe that?  Or is he just insane?

Maybe he thinks he's winning political power.  He's become a player in the House GOP, so maybe the will to power is the answer.  But I don't get it because of this:

The thing that staggers me about the Republican hatred of this law is its abstract quality. They never address the real problem of our massively inefficient private healthcare market, which is a huge burden on the economy. They never address how to help the millions of uninsured adults get the care all human beings need. They appear to regard a Heritage Foundation, free-market-designed, private healthcare exchange system as some kind of communist plot. They do not seem to believe there is any pressing problem at all. And they have nothing constructive to offer.

He's not railing against a thing, he's screaming against an idea.   Of course, "de-funding" Obamacare wouldn't do anything at all.  It wouldn't repeal it, or stop it, or make it ineffective.  So is Cruz, a Harvard-trained lawyer, too stupid to realize that?  Or too much of a demagogue to care?

Already the explanation for the current situation is that Romney lost because he didn't want to win, not because his message was rejected.  But what is the strategy?  Is Obamacare Cruz's "Springtime for Hitler?"  It has to fail so he can win?  And win what?  Political power?  Back to Andrew Sullivan, in an only slightly different context:

America’s constitutional system only works if the divided branches of government are willing to work together to make consensual agreements about running the government. Republicans are showing themselves to be too irresponsible to make the American constitutional system work.

As Harry Reid pointed out recently, the Affordable Care Act has been the law for 4 years now.  Why are the Republicans still so angry?  Is it because a black man got it passed?  (That is getting easier and easier to believe, and harder and harder to deny.)  Is it because they so fear socialism for the people, but not for corporations?  I don't remember the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act generating this kind of animosity in 1968 and 1969.  Here we have a rabid minority determined to have their way or, failing that, to burn it all down.  Are we at the point that, in order to save constitutional democracy we must destroy it? 

The Republicans in the House seem to think so.