cognitive dissonance

I wanted to title a post "cognitive dissonance" because it sounds as if I am going to provide a somewhat more erudite rant than usual.  However, I think it aptly describes how I felt this morning as the earnest, nice, polite republicans on NPR interviewed a selection of democrats and asked them if they could work with republicans to pass the execrable AHCA, or whatever McConnell and his henchmen are calling this travesty today.  For the most part, the dems who answered the call remained polite as they were hectored about their attitude toward a bill which will make health care more expensive for most people and unavailable for  many more.  I wonder if Rachel Martin would be so demure if her health insurance was being taken away or made vastly more expensive.  Instead of allowing the GOP to define this plan or forcing democrats to defend Obamacare, if the media merely described the AHCA and what it does, they would be asking vastly different questions of the protagonists' views.  As Cheeto Jesus told the media after the House version of the bill was explained to him, it was "mean".   If anything, the Senate version is meaner, and it sounds like the democrats have finally found their mojo by being the anti meanness party.   Kevin Drum, in describing his conservative mother's decision to become a democrat in the 1950s after going to college at USC, she said it was not so much the policy stands.  Republicans were just mean.  By associating "MEAN" with the republicans' repulsive version of a health care bill, democrats may have found the silver bullet to kill this particular zombie.