The Patriot Post® · The Democrats' Zika Gambit

Republican “obstructionists” are once again harming the people’s health and livelihood by impeding the allocation of $1.1 billion in taxpayer funding to protect against the Zika virus. At least, that’s the fraudulent narrative Senate Democrats are pushing. Piggybacking on a Democrat filibuster of this funding measure, Harry Reid said it represented “nothing more than a goodie bag for the fringes of the Republican Party.” He went on to claim, “It’s like we’re being dared to oppose this legislation. We have no choice [but to filibuster].”

But the gridlock is in fact due to political opportunism on the part of Democrats and their pet projects. Investor’s Business Daily says the filibuster “had to do with a provision that wasn’t in the bill involving a ban on displays of the Confederate flag.” Yes, seriously. Because nothing protects against Zika quite like banning Confederate flags.

IBD continues, “Another was a beef over a provision that would have loosened EPA restrictions on some pesticides — pesticides that would be used to help kill Zika-carrying mosquitoes. The Democrats real complaint was that Planned Parenthood wouldn’t be able to get its hands on a small portion of the funds — less than 9% — that is directed instead to public health departments, hospitals and entities that are reimbursed by public health plans.”

So the Democrats’ real opprobrium has to do with — what else? — a lack of additional resources for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest provider of abortions and one of the Left’s sacred cows and enablers of social re-engineering.

That’s not to say Republicans are blameless. As Genevieve Wood observes, “The truth is no new money is needed and Republicans were wrong to cave on that front. But compromise they did and it still wasn’t enough to get the Democrats to go along. And therein lies the hypocrisy.” The Democrats are becoming incapable of compromising, and they will politicize anything in order to prop up malicious enterprises like the abortion industry.