Michael Steele goes to a black college and insults a woman whose mother died of cancer because she said that everyone should have good health care.

So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.

First, there's the insanity of the head of the RNC criticizing anyone for disrupting a town hall meeting. Second, you have a woman whose mother died, ostensibly because of a lack of insurance, basically being insulted for daring to try to call attention to herself.

And this is not the only example. I can think of a dozen instances of Republican officials dismissing people trying to explain how the current system is broken. There was Tom Coburn telling the crying woman whose insurance refused to cover her husband that she should go to her neighbors for help. There was "Great White Hope" Republican Lynn Jenkins telling an uninsured constituent to be a grown-up and get insurance. The callousness on display at these things is palpable. And it could easily be turned into a powerful force for change.

That is, if there was one Democratic strategist interested in making a moral case anymore instead of a bunch of functionaries squandering a progressive agenda in favor of pleasing elites and talking about "bending the cost curve."

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On this morning's Meet the Press, Rachel Maddow backs former congressman Dick Armey (head of the Freedomworks lobbying group) against the wall and lets everyone know exactly what his radical opinion is on Medicare:

MS. MADDOW: Do you really think that there’s a major uprising of seniors wanting to get out of Medicare? I know you’re suing the government for your right personally to get out of Medicare.

REP. ARMEY: Right.

MS. MADDOW: But do you really think that’s the problem...

SEN. COBURN: Is it...

MS. MADDOW: ...that Medicare—that seniors hate Medicare and they want out?

REP. ARMEY: No, I didn’t say that. Most seniors—I was talking to my minister the other day. My minister says, “Dick, I’m so fortunate I’m in Medicare.” I said, “Bless you, my, my friend that you get to be in it if you choose to be so.” But if you give a government program and you let me choose to be in or choose to be out, that’s generosity. If you force me in, irrespective of my desires, that’s tyranny. Now, if Medicare’s $46 trillion in the red, with no idea how we’re going to pay for it, why, why do they not let people who don’t want to be in out?

MS. MADDOW: This is...

MR. GREGORY: Let me—I want to get it...

REP. ARMEY: I mean, that’s...

MS. MADDOW: Just—I—very briefly.

REP. ARMEY: This, this, this defies logic.

MS. MADDOW: This is a really important point. The anti-healthcare reform lobby thinks that Medicare is tyranny, OK?

REP. ARMEY: I did—I said...

MS. MADDOW: This is an—I mean, you said in 1995 that “Medicare is a program I would have no part of in a free world.”

REP. ARMEY: Right. Absolutely right.

MS. MADDOW: You said in 2002, “We’re going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over a period of time.”

REP. ARMEY: And I’m going to enumerate exactly what I’m talking about. Medicare...

MS. MADDOW: Americans need to know this is your position and this is the position of the anti-healthcare reform lobby.

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