The Right’s Obamacare Rhetoric Is Completely Detached from Reality

[ashling]

http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/13/the-rights-obamacare-rhetoric-is-completely-unhinged-from-reality/

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This stuff is nothing short of comical when you recall that Obamacare was a conservative answer to the doomed “Hillarycare” plan (which would have mandated that most employers provide decent coverage for their workers). The Republican Party’s last presidential nominee called the very similar scheme he’d enacted as governor of Massachusetts, “the ultimate conservatism,” adding: “that’s why the Heritage Foundation worked with us… [they] recognized that the principles of free enterprise and personal responsibility were at work.” Of the provision that conservatives now decry as an egregious assault on Americans’ freedoms, Mitt Romney explained, “we got the idea of an individual mandate… from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation.”

***.

While people who don’t consume an enormous amount of Fox News can easily laugh off the Hitler comparisons, another line of argument made by virtually every conservative in America is just as unmoored from reality: the claim that the law has already proven to be a calamity. Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently spoke with a straight face of “the enormous harms Obamacare is causing, all of the millions of Americans who are losing their jobs, being pushed into part-time work, losing their health insurance.”

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Nothing Cruz said is reflected in any objective reality. ***

Also, many Americans haven’t a clue what’s in Obamacare – a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll conducted in April found that four-in-ten thought that it had been repealed or struck down by the courts. That means a significant number of those who disapprove of the law think it’s casting millions of people out of work and driving the cost of health care through the roof – or that it’s akin to slavery, the French Revolution and the Holocaust. Another KFF poll, conducted in March, asked people what they thought of 11 of Obamacare’s provisions, and found that ten of them enjoyed the support of significant majorities – only the “personal responsibility program” Newt Gingrich got from the Heritage Foundation and then passed on to Mitt Romney proved unpopular. What’s more, the elements of the law people liked best were among those that the fewest respondents knew about.

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Which leads to an even greater irony: by throwing an epic tantrum and shutting down the government, Obamacare’s fiercest opponents have sucked media coverage away from all the glitches and screw-ups that marked the first two weeks of enrollment. In fact, according to the NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll released last week, the showdown has had a “boomerang effect,” raising the law’s popularity by seven percentage points and prompting one liberal group to send Ted Cruz a lovely fruit basket and a warm note of thanks.

[liberal N proud]

1. The Right Is Completely Detached from Reality

That is all you need to say!

[Wounded Bear]

2. You could leave "Obamacare" completely out of that statement...

and it would still be true.

[doc03]

3. From what I am hearing Obama may have been wise to give the Republicans their

one year postponement. It sounds like the web site is one cluster f--- and it is giving Republicans credablity about it
being a train wreck.

[zipplewrath]

4. Outcome based thinking

The Right tends towards what I call "outcome based thinking". They decide what the outcome should be, and then arrange information to support that outcome. Anything that doesn't support the outcome is false or misleading and anything that supports it is "true". It's where the joke about "reality has a liberal bias" comes from. It is a reference to a type of thinking they abhor. It is the type that says that if the observation (fact) is contrary to the conclusion, the conclusion is wrong. In their world, if the observation is contrary to the conclusion, the OBSERVATION is wrong.

This type of thinking isn't uncommon, and limited to the right. A large number of people will tend toward rejecting observations that don't align with what they believe they "know". It is useful when in an environment where there is an effort to deceive. I tend not to accept my own observations when watching a magicians performance. i.e. I reject that he can saw a woman in half and reconnect her, despite seeing it done. However, the right does not endeavor to figure out how the "trick is done" they just move on with the presumption that it is a trick. So they reject global warming because they presume they are being mislead because the conclusion is contrary to what they believe. I have no problem with skepticism. It's willful ignorance that is the problem.