Friday, June 19, 2009
Trojan Horse: A Case Study Of Barack Obama's Political Methodology
The health care "debate" is raging and president Gigantic Hussein Cajones is set to propagandize on the subject from the White House via his shiny new All Barack Channel, so it's instructive to fire up the Wayback Machine and study Obama's tactical evolution from declaring outright that he advocates single payer health care to a more stealthy approach designed to fool the American people into accepting this destructive policy.
First, let's listen to this statement before a fawning AFL-CIO audience of single-payer cheerleaders in 2003, when he could say whatever he wanted and get away with it because he was, well, a nobody:
"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer health care plan."
Notice that he does not offer the caveat that pure single payer isn't practical and he would only go with it if he could start from scratch, as he later claims he Always Said™; he just points out that first, he has to capture the White House, Congress and whatever other branches of the government he can control. He offers no caveats in favor of sharing ground with private insurers as he does later when the heat is on; it's a straight-ahead, unequivocal ideological commitment to single payer health care.
Now let's go to the Today Show, where Meredith Viera plays a clip from the primary showing Obama denying that he'd ever been a proponent of single payer health care, because he's beginning to realize that won't play with the American public standing between him and the White House. Ironically, it's Hillary!, who campaigned for single payer Hillarycare, who nails Obama's ass to the wall here and gets him all astutter:
Sure. Whatever you say.
But here's the giveaway in this clip from an Obamahall meeting, where he admits that he knows the only way to get to single payer care is by first latching on to the present system to get a foothold, after which he can take it down from within and replace it with single payer, which has been his intention all along.
"Making that transition in a rapid way would be very difficult (because of the effect it would have on the people presently employed in that system, people he needs for now until he is in a position to destroy that system later on)... and people don't have time to wait, they need relief now, so my attitude is let's build off the system that we've got, let's make it more efficient, and we maybe over time, as we make the system more efficient and everybody's covered, decide that there are other ways to provide care more effectively."
What "other ways" would there be, pray tell, besides single payer, which is the only way that would be left once Obama's plan has laid waste to the eeeevil private medical insurance industry.
The press, all of whom except for FOX are in the bag for Obama, are even resorting to editing His comments to hide His dream of single-payer care. And of course, he is using another of his favorite devices, the straw man, to paint the opposition as dishonest, unreasonable, even paranoid.
Democrat Russ Feingold lets slip the Obamian veil obscuring the single-payer Trojan Horse in a moment of rare (for a Demoocrat) candor in this clip showing at Hot Air:
Feingold:
If you want to know what Obama plans to do, listen to what he tells you he doesn't want to do, then pay close attention to his straw man argument, such as this elegantly illustrative gem:
Again: if you want to cut through Obama's bullshit and get to the truth, just listen to what he claims he specifically does not want to do; then identify what he dismisses as "illegitimate concerns", and that will unfailingly tell you exactly what he plans to do.
Peter Whener writes in his Commentary Magazine article, Decoding Obama:
First, let's listen to this statement before a fawning AFL-CIO audience of single-payer cheerleaders in 2003, when he could say whatever he wanted and get away with it because he was, well, a nobody:
"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer health care plan."
Notice that he does not offer the caveat that pure single payer isn't practical and he would only go with it if he could start from scratch, as he later claims he Always Said™; he just points out that first, he has to capture the White House, Congress and whatever other branches of the government he can control. He offers no caveats in favor of sharing ground with private insurers as he does later when the heat is on; it's a straight-ahead, unequivocal ideological commitment to single payer health care.
Now let's go to the Today Show, where Meredith Viera plays a clip from the primary showing Obama denying that he'd ever been a proponent of single payer health care, because he's beginning to realize that won't play with the American public standing between him and the White House. Ironically, it's Hillary!, who campaigned for single payer Hillarycare, who nails Obama's ass to the wall here and gets him all astutter:
Sure. Whatever you say.
But here's the giveaway in this clip from an Obamahall meeting, where he admits that he knows the only way to get to single payer care is by first latching on to the present system to get a foothold, after which he can take it down from within and replace it with single payer, which has been his intention all along.
"Making that transition in a rapid way would be very difficult (because of the effect it would have on the people presently employed in that system, people he needs for now until he is in a position to destroy that system later on)... and people don't have time to wait, they need relief now, so my attitude is let's build off the system that we've got, let's make it more efficient, and we maybe over time, as we make the system more efficient and everybody's covered, decide that there are other ways to provide care more effectively."
What "other ways" would there be, pray tell, besides single payer, which is the only way that would be left once Obama's plan has laid waste to the eeeevil private medical insurance industry.
The press, all of whom except for FOX are in the bag for Obama, are even resorting to editing His comments to hide His dream of single-payer care. And of course, he is using another of his favorite devices, the straw man, to paint the opposition as dishonest, unreasonable, even paranoid.
Democrat Russ Feingold lets slip the Obamian veil obscuring the single-payer Trojan Horse in a moment of rare (for a Demoocrat) candor in this clip showing at Hot Air:
Feingold:
I believe the goal here is to create whatever legislation we have in a way that could be developed into something like a single-payer system.Obama's method never changes: tell your base constituency what you honestly plan to do, then tell the fawning media, who never question your lies, that you "have never said" whatever it was you are on record as actually having said; then telegraph how you are going to implement exactly what you originally said you would, with the caveat that you aren't doing it for reasons of ideology or politics, but simply out of pragmatism required to deal with the mess left behind by the Bush administration. Oh yes, almost forgot: it is also now a crisis! and it must be dealt with! ASAP! or the skies will fall! and the oceans! will once again! begin to rise!
If you want to know what Obama plans to do, listen to what he tells you he doesn't want to do, then pay close attention to his straw man argument, such as this elegantly illustrative gem:
Let me also dismiss without addressing it what I want portrayed as an illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.in which he characterizes the opposition's concerns as "illegitimate" when in fact they are clearly not only perfectly legitimate, but exactly on target as Feingold and others have already made abundantly clear. Oh, and I may have reworded some of that.
Again: if you want to cut through Obama's bullshit and get to the truth, just listen to what he claims he specifically does not want to do; then identify what he dismisses as "illegitimate concerns", and that will unfailingly tell you exactly what he plans to do.
Peter Whener writes in his Commentary Magazine article, Decoding Obama:
Then there are the things that have almost been forgotten by now. Obama, during the campaign, said, "[Lobbyists] will not work in my White House" – even though he immediately allowed waivers for lobbyists. Having pledged to slash earmarks by more than half when he became president, Obama signed an omnibus spending bill containing 8,500 of them. Having made bi-partisanship a pillar of his campaign, Obama has so far governed in a more partisan fashion than any president in generations. Having claimed the capacity to “see all sides of an argument,” the president routinely constructs strawmen he can set ablaze. And having said “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” Obama spends an inordinate amount of time and energy doing just that (in one speech alone, he included more than two dozen critical comments, direct or implied, against the Bush Administration).
It is hardly unprecedented for a politician to rely on contradictory, misleading, and intellectually dishonest statements. But in only five months, Barack Obama – the man who campaigned on a new kind of politics, who ran on hope and against cynicism, and who insisted “words mean something” – has set a pace that is going to be hard to match, and hopefully hard to sustain.
