President Obama Didn't Misspeak; He Lied

 

By Andrew Malcolm
IBDEditorials.com

Let's clear up some foggy prevarications polluting President Obama's ongoing snow job for ObamaCare:

If you tell a spouse you're going to Sam's Club when you really mean Costco, that's no big deal. Those membership stores are the same, except one peddles better hot dogs. That's called misspeaking.

However, if you're president of the United States peddling a legislative tumor like ObamaCare, one that you know will drastically change almost one-fifth of the nation's economy, one that openly claims to help a few million uninsured Americans while secretly disrupting the lives, families, finances and medical care of more than 100 million Americans, and you say things like this:

“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” -- Pres. Barack Obama to the American Medical Assn., June 15, 2009.

Or, if you say something like this:

"And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.” -- Pres. Obama, April 1, 2010.

Or if you say something like this:

"If you like your plan, you'll be keeping your plan. No one's taking that away from you. Three months from now, six months from now, you're gonna look around, be sitting in your doctor's office, reading the old people magazines, you'll be saying, 'Hey, same doctor. Same plan. It wasn't Armageddon.'" -- Pres. Obama, Sept. 25, 2010.

Or maybe even like this:

"I want to speak plainly, clearly, honestly about what (ObamaCare) means for you and the people you care about. Let's start with this fact that even before the Affordable Care Act fully takes effect, about 85% of Americans already have health insurance either through their job, through Medicare or through the independent market.

"So, if you're one of these folks, it's reasonable you might worry whether healthcare reform is gonna create changes that are a problem for you, especially when you're bombarded by all sorts of fear-mongering. So, the first thing you need to know is this: If you already have healthcare, you don't have to do anything." -- Pres. Obama, Sept. 26, 2013.

And then he rewrites rhetorical history with something like this:

"What we said was, you could keep (your policy) -- if it hasn't changed since the law passed." -- Pres. Obama, Nov. 4, 2013.

Now, you don't need Thor's super-powers to detect the dramatic difference between what Obama has been saying some two dozen times over three years and what just now he claims he was saying.

Too much to expect this guy to admit anything. In Dallas today, he'll bluff his way through another pitch.

Which has left Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, struggling to explain his boss' remarks: "Look, I, as I said last week, accept that communications are challenging here. The President -- I mean, look, you have to remember that the Affordable Care Act promises....What the President was referring to was the broader promise of the Affordable Care Act."

Nice try. Americans don't always pay attention to politics. Who can blame them? And, actually, that's what Obama has successfully counted on, that his live-streamed snippets of falsehoods blared by a largely complicit media would trump critics' negative natterings.

But the broken promises, false claims and tortured truths have reached a critical mass now. Bludgeoned by Benghazi, IRS revelations, FBI probes, NSA disclosures, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Syria's slips and now ObamaCare's sticker shock and outright whoppers, more Americans detect the odor of betrayal, however reluctantly. Gallup reported Tuesday that for the first time Obama's daily job approval sank below 40%.

But wait! There is one more thing. Do you remember when Obama unveiled his healthcare "reform" scheme? That was way back on Sept. 9, 2009, in a speech to a joint session of Congress.

Ironically, the president that night warned opponents against saying that his plan to ultimately centralize American healthcare in the federal government would do things that it wouldn't do. "If you misrepresent what's in this plan," Obama threatened, "we will call you out."

Now, today we have Obama having destroyed his own credibility by repeatedly claiming ObamaCare will not do things that it clearly will do.

That night on Capitol Hill, however, became more notorious for another quote. The president's remarks on national TV were interrupted by a Republican representative, Joe Wilson of South Carolina. He shouted out, "You lie!" The breach of decorum raised quite a stir at the time.

Turns out, Rep. Wilson wasn't just rude. He was prescient.