Much has been said about Michael Steele’s patently dishonest piece in (where else?) the Washington Post, but I liked what Joe Klein had to say:
What makes Steele’s column especially hilarious is that it’s about health care for senior citizens–actually, it’s an attempt to scare senior citizens–but it never mentions that Medicare is “a government-run health-care system.” One would think that the Washington Post’s intrepid editors would have force Steele to cut or modify Steele’s lie about Obama’s “government-run” plan, and one would hope that the Post’s editors would ask Steele to point out the Medicare–the program he wants to “save”–is precisely such a plan.
Think Progress does what Fred Hiatt and the Washington Post can’t do, which is to point out that for the past two decades Republicans have repeatedly attempted to axe Medicare spending, and those plucky bloggers apparently even spent five minutes with a high-tech tool (not Tom Friedman) called “Teh GOOGLE,” and dig up recent interviews in which Steele actively and openly called for cuts to medicare. Because bloggers don’t fact check.
Finally, Yglesias thinks long ball:
So congratulations to Fred Hiatt for landing such a buzzworthy piece of nonsense for his publication and I hope the right-wing enjoys the giant tax hikes we’ll be enacting down the road once they show the political world that any attempt to trim Medicare spending, no matter how modest, will be savaged by opportunists on the other side.
Now that the RNC has declared fully-funded medicare today, fully funded medicare tomorrow, fully funded medicare FOREVA, you can almost feel the heartbreak among glibertarians and fiscal conservatives everywhere. Must feel good getting used like that, because they keep on letting it happen.
*** Update ***
Props to Ben Smith for quickly calling BS on Steele.
MattF
It’s all about (and only about) power. P-O-W-E-R. POOOWWWWEEEERRR. Power Power Power Power Power Power.
joes527
meh.
Since when are republicans required to be consistent?
You can’t nail republicans tomorrow with what they said today because … because … because … well — just because. That’s why.
Zifnab
The WSJ? The Washington Times? The Atlantic Monthly? The Weekly Standard? The National Review? The New Republic? The NYPost? The New York Times on alternate weekdays? The LA Times? The Chicago Sun? CNN? MSNBC? FAUX? Good Morning America? The Today Show? ABC? NBC? CBS? The Woman’s Home Journal?
Oh, I’m sorry. Please continue.
eric
@Zifnab: In Da House! that’s where truth gets spoken to power. Can a brotha get a witness?
jwb
Since Steele and the other goopers are so gung ho for Medicare these days, it seems like now might be a good time to float an expansion of Medicare downward to say age 50. At the very least it would get those buggers to shut the fuck up.
The Grand Panjandrum
The Republicans are starting to sound like this little guy. (OK they aren’t quite as articulatle or cute but they do remind of this little guys.)
kay
It’s probably good for spineless Democrats. I knew Republicans were going to grab credit for “saving” Medicare.
Hopefully the OUTRAGE! will get Congressional Democrats off their asses.
They have to show up. They really can’t continue to hide.
Notorious P.A.T.
Meanwhile, some guy cries and moans that people don’t seem to think there is any reason not to lie about health care reform:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=08&year=2009&base_name=there_is_no_penalty_for_lying#116365
kay
@jwb:
It’s a shame, because there was real movement towards reigning in some abuses, in “medical equipment” sales, for example, and that was bipartisan.
I guess that’s out the window.
DougJ
Of course, Klein still had to lay a “Democrats do it too” on us in the last paragraph.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Shorter Howard Kurtz: Why do heavily armed people keep firing and reloading their guns when we keep saying mean things about their bullets? Oh the huuuumanity!
Lee
That is so full of win.
T. O'Hara
So what? Think that matters now? After years of blocking meaningful reform, Democrats just noticed the Medicare spending curve is unsustainable and want to use the crisis to sell a whole new entitlement program. You think the RNC has some obligation to help? Politics makes strange bedfellows. Here, seniors are a natural ally to the GOP.
Political Pragmatist
Reading the Ben Smith article reminded me of how much we miss Tim Russert. Did David Gregory ever watch MTP?
brantl
This is the Republican’ts all over. Medicare is now established, so now it’s “good”. If it doesn’t already exist, it can’t be good. It’s just as indefensible as the opinion that if it hasn’t been tried yet it MUST BE good, but they haven’t ever thought about it enough to cotton on to that.
brantl
brantl
John Cole, put some commas or semicolons in your XHTML tags, to logically separate them! I just put up a block quote with nothing in it, for Christ’s sake!