To Jonathan Cohn, who has an
excellent item detailing how Mitt Romney both got the facts wrong about Medicare cuts in the most recent debate and, thanks to his support for the Ryan Medicare plan, supports cuts deeper than the ones he was criticizing Barack Obama for including in ACA. Go to Cohn's excellent post for the details.
Not that it will matter in the nomination contest at all. Romney's problems aren't going to be about unfairly slamming ACA; they are, of course, about being the father of it. The trick for Romney is to maintain a
strict line between Obamacare (the socialist government takeover of healthcare while slashing benefits for seniors and rationing mandated death panels) and
ACA the program he helped pass and implement in Massachusetts. So bragging about one of the true differences between them, which is that ACA had cost controls while Romneycare didn't, is pretty much a necessary step for him. Even if it does lead him into some odd, hypocritical, and in this case entirely false, rhetoric.
After all, the one thing you can be sure of is that Republicans are not going to punish you for concocting or repeating crazy myths about Obamacare.
Also: nice catch!
"Republicans are not going to punish you for concocting or repeating crazy myths about Obamacare."
ReplyDeleteRepublicans don't care about lies, as long as the lies are emotionally pleasing.
This is because Republicans don't really care very much about America. They like having power, and they like venting, but they don't care much at all about policy (ie, the stuff that government does that affects Americans' lives).
Reflection:
ReplyDeleteIt's not like Dems or Indies are that much better on believing lies (though, I'd like it if we were!).
Everyone likes lies that are emotionally pleasing.
Sometimes, what's emotionally pleasing works out to the truth-advantage of one party or the other. I'd say that the Dems embraced environmentalism before the truth was really known/knowable on climate change, for example. (I can't think of any comparable examples on the R side, but hey, I'm a partisan!)
It's not that I don't agree with your assesment of Republican office-seekers. But, I think extending that to lay Republicans is a bit much. Maybe 20 years down the road, we'll find out that wealth really does trickle down, and Dems will reject that and Republicans love it.
Speaking of "trickle down". I never understood why it was considered a positive connotation. It always suggested to me the only a bare minimum of that wealth would go anywhere else. Certainly not enough to make a positive difference.
ReplyDelete@Matt, I have one for you. Republicans embraced the idea that welfare incentives caused unnecessary dependence for many who could work. The results of welfare reform showed them to be right.
ReplyDeleteEveryone likes lies that are emotionally pleasing. ... Maybe 20 years down the road, we'll find out that wealth really does trickle down, and Dems will reject that and Republicans love it.
ReplyDeleteWell, sure. Maybe someday, we'll enact an income tax cut that actually does increase revenues. And maybe someday, we'll see a movement conservatism and self-described "conservative Republicans" who don't militantly support a president who turns surpluses into deficits and works to expand federal and executive authority at every step. And maybe the current president actually will go on an "apology tour" about America. And maybe we will be able to invade & occupy countries into stable democracies that love us. And maybe someday "regulatory uncertainty" and costly regulations actually will be a main cause of problems in the economy. And maybe there actually will be a global conspiracy to manufacture concern over climate change. And maybe someday we actually will enact a stimulus bill that doesn't create a single job and doesn't contribute to economic growth. And maybe we actually will see every Muslim in the world work with the secular left to create a worldwide pro-homosexual sharia law.
Those would indeed be interesting developments. If and when they happen, those of us who value an empirical, rational understanding of the world will have to change our views accordingly.
Until such a time as that happens, however, we will be confined to boring reality as to what we've seen on the actually-existing Planet Earth and in America.
As of right now, allegiance to the Republican Party consists solely and entirely of belief in emotionally pleasing lies. There is no analog for the Democratic Party.
ModeratePoli comes up with one example of a policy from 15 years ago that appears to have proved the conservative perspective correct. At the time, of course, it was a cause of great debate within the Democratic Party, and was signed into law by a Democratic president. The Republican Party shows no interest whatsoever in engaging with reality.
This is the fundamental problem with American politics. It must not be waved away with false equivalence and hypothetical scenarios about the realities of 2040.