Regular readers know that I’m a fan of Jonathan Chait’s writing. It isn’t so much that he’s insightful. He is, of course, often quite insightful. He is also, however, pigheaded about a few issues that he just can’t seem to get his head around. But what I most appreciate is his sense of humor and his great appreciation of hypocrisy. Today, he wrote an article that rather well sums up the latter part of that, Here Is the Most Shameless Anti-Obamacare Argument Yet. But unusually for him, he doesn’t seem to see the humor in the hypocrisy.
The article is about how conservatives saw the increase in first quarter healthcare costs as an indication that Obamacare was going to cause us to go broke. “See,” they said, “We can’t afford to cover all these extra people!” But now, the original estimates have been revised and it turns out that healthcare costs did not spike and as a result, GDP in the first quarter actually decreased. So the conservatives are admitting they were wrong about Obamacare? Ha ha ha! No, of course not! They’ve simply changed what they are saying.
Chait noted that on the first of May, Ed Morrissey at The Fiscal Times published a column, Obama’s Biggest Lie: the ACA Will Lower Healthcare Spending. But then today, Morrissey published a column, Obamacare Will Suck the Life Out of the Economy. In other words, regardless of what happens, Obamacare is terrible. And Morrissey is hardly alone. As Chait put it:
But really, I would think that Chait could find something to laugh about in this. I think he may be to the point of exasperation. Is there no end to this? Will conservatives never admit defeat on Obamacare and just get on with other things?
I think the answer to this is quite simple: no. Conservatives are still complaining about progressive taxation! And that is true of just about every other political improvement of the last century and a half. Liberals love to quote Dwight Eisenhower:
But he wrote that in 1954! Since then, that “tiny splinter group” has become the Republican Party. Look at the recent Mississippi Republican Senate run-off. If it hadn’t be for Democratic Party support, the guy who would have won would have been the guy who promised to commit political malpractice by not bringing federal money back to the state. So yes, the Republican Party has gone crazy and stupid, and no, they are not going to stop attacking Obamacare regardless of what the facts are.
