America's Most Listened-To Hate-Talk Radio Show Breaks With Sarah Palin Over Health Care

John and Ken don't think of themselves as Hate-Talk Radio hosts; they think of themselves as entertaining Hate-Talk Radio hosts. And they host the biggest drive-time radio show in L.A. In fact, their show is the biggest drive-time radio show in America. Five hours a day of pure entertaining hate. In L.A. it's on KFI and in San Francisco, on KNEW.

John, more the asshole of the two, is John Kobylt, and Ken is Ken Chiampou. And yes, of course, they are right-wing imbeciles beloved of Southern California teabaggers. Their vicious and relentless campaign against Gray Davis is the reason California is saddled with Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom they endorsed-- and whom they never tire of railing against, and who is the most unpopular governor in recorded history. That was their biggest political achievement. Everything else they attempted has failed, from defeating "immigrant lover" and closet queen David Dreier to recalling a bunch of Republicans they deemed too moderate.

One of their most recent forays into failed politics was an attempt to derail the healthcare reform bill, a combination of their #1 obsession (Greed and Selfishness) and their #2 obsession (hatred of immigrants). You probably noticed that Sunday night, this failed as well, and is now threatening to turn the conservatives they extoll into ever more diminished and less influential figures.

Passage of the health care legislation challenges the heart of the Republicans’ strategy this year: To present a unified opposition to big Democratic ideas, in this case expressed in a stream of bristling anger and occasional mischaracterizations of what the bill would do.

From a legislative perspective, the Republican strategy did not work, despite months of predictions from Republicans that the bill would fail and that that would cripple Mr. Obama’s presidency... The head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, offered a similar argument. “When this bill goes into effect, and none of the things Republicans warned about begin to happen-- none of the death panels, none of the government takeover, none of the socialism-- Republicans will have no credibility,” Mr. Menendez said.

Yesterday John and Ken were complaining about the bill, but from an interesting conservative perspective. They cursed Sarah Palin for bringing up the whole death panels controversy. That's because they strongly favor death panels. And that brings us back to obsession #1: Greed and Selfishness. They're all for pulling the plug on Granny, because they're worried that they'll have to pay to keep her alive. "Let her hug the grandkid one more time and be on her way... fast."

Yesterday's NY Times wondered aloud what will happen when the Know Nothings the media calls teabaggers suddenly figure out that the GOP has been lying to them all year about the healthcare bill and that all the "information" they think they have from Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and O'Reilly and Savage and Hannity is nothing but baseless propaganda. "Republicans," they say, will "face the question of what happens if the health care bill does not create the cataclysm that they warned of during the many months of debate."

Closing out the floor debate on Sunday night, the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, warned that the legislation would be “the last straw for the American people.” Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, proclaimed several hours earlier, “Freedom dies a little bit today.” I think she was talking about her political party and already discredited conservatism. But you probably already read all the commentary on David Frum's Waterloo, right?