From where I’m sitting, it’s beginning to look like the R and the D party elites are dead set on Obama-RomneyCare becoming part of our lives — as the masses become more locked to them, their power base is more set. They’re unabashedly exempted from this healthcare system designed just for us. And they pick and choose who else can be exempted. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
The leaders of the GOP wanted, for many years, a big part of what is called Obamacare. Despite his indignation about mandates on the stump, even Rick Santorum supported them in 1994, when he first ran for US Senate. Obamacare would have been considered a “reasonable compromise” back in the 90s, and it would have ended up passing by a bipartisan majority and to great acclaim from the punditocracy. The outrage exhibited by the GOP during the Obamacare debate was mostly for show. The true conservatives opposed it, of course, but not the libs/moderates that constitute the majority of the party.
Yes, they do see themselves as distinct from and above the sheeple.