It looks like Congressman Murphy read the tea leaves before Saturday’s vote to inject more government into healthcare, and by “read the tea leaves” I mean “saw the amalgamation of public outrage and lack of support outside of the liberal fringe and subsequently freaked”. If he had any aspirations of getting re-elected in one of the most conservative districts in the Northeast, casting a “yes” vote would have rapidly transitioned those aspirations into delusions.

Unfortunately, Congressman Murphy is still advocating the idea. From his post-HR 3962 press release:

This bill makes a number of important reforms, which I wholeheartedly support including the elimination of the lifetime caps on insurance benefits and the pre-existing condition exclusion, invests in prevention and primary care, creates a health insurance exchange to force insurance companies to compete and offers a public option for people who want to get away from for-profit insurance companies.

For those who don’t speak Beltway with the same proficiency as the Congressman’s taxpayer-funded communications director, I’ll offer a translation:

I might not have had the guts to vote for it, but I still like the idea of having the government work to put our private insurers out of business so we can sign you up for government-administered healthcare. I’m willing to ignore the fact that the feds have dropped the ball on administering the VA, maintaining the integrity of Medicaid and keeping Medicare in the black, because if I want to get re-elected, I need to keep pandering to the unmedicated lunatics from MoveOn and Citizens Action who blindly supported me because I had a “D” after my name.

This was definitely a “for-it-before-he-was-against-it” moment, and the kicker was that Murphy attributes his opposition to the program’s cost being too great. Congressman Murphy, it can therefore be construed, wants to do away with public insurers, but he wants to do it on the cheap. For those of you watching at home: that does not make him a fiscal conservative.