Republican demagoguery at its finest

Oct 18, 2008
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Bowling Green Ohio
If Orrin Hatch were any slimier, he would have slid right out of those multiple chairs he occupied on multiple talk shows yesterday. The man positively oozed deceit, almost laughably so.

But it was also clear that what he was selling had been poll-tested and focus-grouped with the usual GOP rigor, which means the peddled product was confidently designed to scare the unholy bejesus out of the largest possible number of the oldest of lowest information voters.

Medicare's 38 trillion dollar unfunded liability was Hatch's shibboleth on CNN's "State of the Union," and again on ABC's "This Week," deployed like shamanistic garlic against any health-care reforms whose heretofore absence have helped to get Medicare in the situation he was deploring. Somehow the two were hazily linked, but not; it was reminiscent of the Bush administration's unremitting coupling of "Iraq" and "9/11."

At one point, on "State of the Union," Hatch sandwiched a disembodied Boo! between "concern" about "the public plan ... or what I call the Washington-controlled government plan" and "concern" about the "national debt" with, "And -- and our senior citizens are scared to death."

He just sort of dropped that in there, a tidbit of geriatric panic-inducement void of any context, except the understood type already generated in Palinesque and Grassleyite terms. If the national debt doesn't get you, those death panels will. GOP integrity, always integrity.

Which had been previewed, rehearsed, and thoroughly worked over the day before, too, by Sen. Mike Enzi, in the Republicans' weekly radio address. Congressional Democrats, he said, are scheduling woeful reductions in Medicare spending -- wait, wouldn't that be good, considering its 38 trillion dollar unfunded liability? Oh never mind -- that "will result in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from the elderly to create new government programs."

One must concede that the Dems really stepped in it this time. What Enzi, and Hatch, are rattling bones about has nothing to do with legislative reality or any senior's actual health care, but there is nothing in this political world easier to demagogue than those two little words, "Medicare cuts." But Democrats -- no strangers themselves to demagoguing Medicare -- opened the door, and the Republicans walked right in.
Republican demagoguery at its finest | BuzzFlash.org
 

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