Republicans Continue to Disrespect Americans’ Intelligence With Their Weekly Address
Click here to view this media I’ll just let Steve Benen take it from here after watching this week’s hackery from Sen. John Barrasso and the Republican’s weekly address. PART AND PARCEL OF A LARGER AMNESIA CAMPAIGN… : In today’s official GOP weekly address, Sen. John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming, the vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference, returned to a familiar subject : his party’s obsession with eliminating the Affordable Care Act. The pitch was, not surprisingly, pretty familiar. “Republicans will fight to repeal this job-destroying law and replace it with patient-centered reforms,” Barrasso said. What might patient-centered reforms look like? For one thing, the GOP wants Americans to be able to buy health insurance across state lines. For another, they’ll “end junk lawsuits that drive up the cost of everyone’s care.” Barrasso also vowed to “restore Americans’ freedom over their own health care decisions.” Substantively, Barrasso, who’s never demonstrated any depth of understanding in any area of public policy, has no idea what he’s talking about. He clearly doesn’t understand the across-state-lines argument ; the “junk lawsuits” argument has been debunked repeatedly ; and the Affordable Care Act gives consumers more power, not less, over their care. But it’s the “job-destroying law” claim that still rankles. We know with certainty that Barasso, like others who repeat the claim, is lying . We also know with certainty that if Republicans succeeded in gutting the law, it would cost, not create, jobs. But it’s worth pausing to appreciate exactly why Republicans have a Tourette’s-like habit of repeating the phrase at every available opportunity. Jay Bookman had a good piece on this recently. [,,,] I realize some of this may seem obvious, but it’s important and too often goes unsaid. We even have helpful charts to help drive the point home. The assumption on the part of Republicans is that Americans are idiots. The public knows there’s a jobs crisis, and knows Democrats passed a series of landmark bills. The point is for Republicans to convince voters that the two enjoy a causal relationship — maybe if Dems hadn’t done all this important work, we wouldn’t have lost so many jobs. This is lazy, cynical, intellectually-dishonest drivel. Even congressional Republicans should be able to understand the reality here. Go read the rest but as Steve followed up with, only a fool would be willing to believe Barrasso on job losses. Since no one is comparing Barrasso’s lies to Goebbels this week , and whether this is just another part of their “big lie” with propagandizing the American public. I’m sure our national media will simply ignore his statement and whether there’s any truth to it.
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Republicans Continue to Disrespect Americans’ Intelligence With Their Weekly Address
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on January 23, 2011. Filed under