A column by James Taranto, ‘Death Panels’ Revisited (via Instapundit) points out:
Obama ran for office on opposition to the individual mandate, then made it the centerpiece of his signature legislative initiative. Perhaps this should have been “lie of the year.” At PolitiFact.com, it wasn’t even a runner-up.
I addressed this issue in a prior post, when Obamacare was first being discussed in July 2009, Obama Was Against Compulsory Health Insurance, Before He Was For It:
The current Democratic House bill on health care includes fines to force people to purchase health insurance, which is consistent with Barack Obama’s current position on mandates. This type of coercion, however, was criticized by Obama during the campaign, when he attacked Hillary Clinton’s health insurance plan because Hillary’s plan mandated universal coverage through fines and other mechanisms which forced people to buy coverage …”
And again in March 2010, as the House was approaching its vote on the Senate Obamacare bill, Obama’s Mandate Head Fake:
There is no more pernicious aspect of the pending health care bills (Senate, House and Obama “proposal”) than the mandate….
There was a time when Obama was against a mandate. That was when he was running against Hillary Clinton, who supported mandates.
Here is the videotape of Obama hammering Hillary not only over the mandate but also over the use of fines to enforce the mandate:
This video is one of the most damning pieces of evidence of the deception of the Obama campaign.
The thing about Hillary was that you could disagree with her, but you knew where she stood. Hillary didn’t try to fool anyone during the campaign.
If Hillary were President and we had a mandate, at least she would not have lied us into it.
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Comments
If Obama had run on what he actually believed, he never could have been elected president. He is a man of the far Left who ran as a centrist. Deception was (and remains) an essential part of his campaign.
I mean, I hate to be so cynical, but is a lie a lie if no one was deceived by it?
Seriously, no one actually believed a thing that came out Obama's mouth, right? Duh. Who are you kidding?
Hell, no one believes anything he says now!
And it doesn't matter to the left, either. Obama satisfies the left's one and only criteria: He makes them feel better about themselves.
I asked a liberal friend of mine a long time ago: Imagine a fantasy world where you could end poverty and racial and gender discrimination forever with one vote. All you had to do was vote for Republican. Would you?
Answer: No.
That says it all for me. They're not interested in solving problems. They're only interested in feeling good about themselves.
Obama was even lying then, because Hillary's plan was, with the mandate, to have a government option that people could sign up for if they did not want or could not a afford a private plan. Like how someone who gets arrested for a crime can get a public defender if they can't afford a private lawyer.
It would have been much fairer than ObamaCare, and also constitutional. And been a good way to drive down cost, because if at least everyone had access to preventative care, the need for high-cost medical interventions would go down.
Hillary may be upfront about her ideology, as opposed to Obama's duplicitousness, but I still can't stand listening to her. Get a load of that "whether this country will finally do what is right…"
I can just tell that she almost said "this worthless country will finally listen to me…" or some such.
What's worse: a politician who lies like this or voters who believe him? He never could have been elected but for the aggressively ignorant useful idiots who voted for him. Plenty of us saw through him like he was transparent.
An anti-mandate mailer from Obama:
Hillary's health care plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it. Is that the best we can do for families struggling with high health care costs?
Hillary's health care plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it… and you pay a penalty if you don't.
The way Hillary Clinton's health care plan covers everyone is to have the government force uninsured people to buy insurance, even if they can't afford it.
"…forcing those who cannot afford health insurance to buy it through mandates…punishing those who don't fall in line with fines."
Punishing families who can't afford health care to begin with just doesn't make sense.
And who did tell the truth?
Taranto: "Palin got the truth out with the help of journalists determined to bolster the deceptions at the heart of ObamaCare. She was instrumental in winning the political argument that looks increasingly likely to render ObamaCare's legislative victory a Pyrrhic one. Sarah Palin outsmarted the formerly mainstream media simply by being blunt and honest. That is why they burn with a mindless rage against her."
I would like to believe that his duplicity will come back to haunt him in two years.