REPUBLICANS + LIES = GOP SENATOR ORRIN HATCH
Gary Ater
March 10, 2010
...Utah Senator Orrin Hatch
As my many regular readers know, every once in a while I have to make some noise about a couple of my pet-peeves and one of what I have come to call "my personal embarrassment".
The two pet-peeves are about "Why do the Republicans have to continually use "talking point lies" when talking to the public?" The other is when the GOP uses polls and data that comes from organizations that are totally biased or even wholly owned by large donor corporations. (Of course, they never state to the public where these partisan connections exist.)
The embarrassment issue is when I have to admit that in my youth, I called myself a "moderate Republican".
Well, this last week, the pet-peeves and my embarrassment were out in full-bloom on national radio, TV and all over in the traditional national press and the Internet.
One specific individual that was out there in all of these mediums was the 33 year Republican Senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch. ( I will dispense with using the prefix "Honorable" Senator, as Senator Hatch hasn´t earned the use of that term for some years now.)
The issue started with an article in the Washington Post, authored by Senator Hatch that was just "chocked full of inaccuracies, falsehoods and misinformation". (Most people would just say "lies".)
Now, I realize that Senator Hatch is a sitting U.S. senator, but I´m seriously puzzled as to why the Washington Post agreed to publish such intellectually dishonest nonsense.
Here was just one of a number of comments in the Post article that starts the list of misinformation:
Senator Hatch: "To impose the will of some Democrats and to circumvent bipartisan opposition, President Obama seems to be encouraging Congress to use the "reconciliation" process, an arcane budget procedure, to ram through the Senate a multitrillion-dollar health-care bill that raises taxes, increases costs and cuts Medicare to fund a new entitlement we can't afford. This is attractive to proponents because it sharply limits debate and amendments to a mere 20 hours and would allow passage with only 51 votes [as opposed to the 60 needed to overcome a procedural hurdle]. But the Constitution intends the opposite process, especially for a bill that would affect one-sixth of the American economy. "
I could use this whole column to break down the innuendo and inaccuracies in this one paragraph. But I won´t. I will instead say I still don´t understand why the Post published this "stuff" without a strong disclaimer.
Fortunately, other readers, columnists, bloggers and media observers were also outraged and they did respond, and here are some of their comments.
E.J. Dionne, an op-ed columnist for the Post, not only wrote his own column attacking some of the senators statements, he was also on Sunday morning´s "Meet the Press" with the senator and he challenged him face to face. As expected, Senator Hatch didn´t admit to any lies. He just kept pounding on the "Republican talking points" of untruths.
On ABC's "This Week", commentator Jake Tapper asked Senator Hatch about Sarah Palin's ridiculous "death panel" rhetoric, and Senator Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) repudiation of the rhetoric, Tapper asked, "Senator Hatch, who's right, Governor Palin or Senator Murkowski?"
Hatch then just refused to answer the question, and instead launched into a truly absurd diatribe:
"What I do know is that the Democrats want a government plan, where the government will take over health care.... They want to move, according to the Lewin Group, up to 119 million people into Medicaid. If that happens, it would destroy the -- the health insurance programs throughout the country."
Jake Tapper hit back, noting that the Lewin Group is a highly biased polling and data company owned by the large health care organization, UnitedHealth Group.
But the real problem isn't that the Lewin Group might be a biased organization that is wholly corporate owned. The reality is that the report "just doesn't say what Hatch said it does". And it appears that the Lewin Group did not even analyze the current legislation.
However, a nonpartisan entity, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), actually has analyzed the bills.
Under the House bill, the CBO estimates that "about 9 million or 10 million" (not 119 million) people would enroll in the public plan. And, rather than killing the private insurance market, the CBO says the House bill would actually increase the number of Americans who hold private employer-based coverage by about 3 million. And by the way, for another untruth, the public plan is nothing like Medicaid.
After all of this misinformation, Senator Hatch then became the focus of someone that has seriously earned a reputation for seeking out and presenting the truth, and only the truth.
In her first year on MSNBC, Rachael Maddow on the Rachael Maddow Show, a previously veteran progressive talk-radio personality, now has a nightly program where she takes on the "political issues of the day". This material from Senator Hatch, that was all over the papers and TV over the weekend, it then hit on Rachael´s show on Monday night.
Rachael has a PhD in communication and she is meticulous in making sure she has the facts, which she confirms with as many different "real" sources as possible. She continues to show her professionalism every night and there are many politicians that now refuse to come on her program. They now know that she would very nicely dissect them, if they had been lying, and she would also do it nicely and with a smile. (One such political couple is former VP Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney. They have refused invitations to come on her show multiple times.)
And Ms. Maddow is not timid when other right-wing TV and radio personalities try to put her in a negative position with items that are less than the truth.
In a recent case where Rachael had shown some misinformation and untruths that had been espoused by FOX´s Glenn Beck, Beck then decided to hit back at her.
That same week, Ms. Maddow took on the Glenn Beck episode where he attacked her. She took Beck´s presentation apart "piece-by-piece" and showed where he had edited his presentation to show the opposite of what actually had occurred. There was much "egg" that ended up on Mr. Beck´s face.
The word is now out-there that if you go after Rachael, you´d better have all your "i´s" dotted and your "t´s" crossed. And when Ms. Maddow does occasionally make a mistake, she comes on her own show the next day to state where she was wrong and she then apologizes. This doesn´t happen very often, and it´s never been a big point where she was incorrect. But I´ve never seen that "truthful" approach with any of the FOX political shows.
Well, Monday night, Rachel Maddow totally destroyed Senator Hatch´s statements and she even used the word "lies". No, she didn't offer a caveat...she called him both a liar AND a hypocrite on her program. It was interesting to see a more "traditional" member of the media, such as Rachael, use the "lie" word. It would be even more interesting to see the corporate-owned members of the regular media used the truthful word, "lie" when it was appropriate. (But they just can´t risk losing their access to the politicians for future interviews, now can they?)
There would be real progress for all Americans if the six o'clock "talking head readers" on the CBS, NBC, ABC nightly news started doing the same. Until then, the Limbaughs, Becks, Hannitys, O´Reillys, and the Republicans will just keep lying until enough "news" organizations and their anchor personnel finally understand the reality. That reality is, that to become a legend and to earn the public´s respect, as did the late Walter Cronkite, you do it by always being truthful and calling it like you see it.
Now, getting back to Senator Hatch, he just continued to dig the hole deeper throughout the weekend.
Senator Hatch has been around long enough, and he knows that his claims aren´t true. He continues to say reconciliation is "arcane," but it´s not. Hatch says the Constitution discourages the Senate from approving legislation by majority rule, but it doesn´t. And we´re not talking about "gray areas" here or debates that are open to interpretation. Hatch is simply and unambiguously wrong. And why the Post published his demonstrably false arguments is a real mystery.
The GOP just wants to demagogue the hell out of issues while the cameras are rolling. And regarding those against the Democrat´s bills, the Republicans now always, always vote the straight right-wing line all the time. Orrin Hatch is a master at it. And so are other Republicans like Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA). And there were those past masters at it such as senators Pete Domenici and Bob Dole. In each case, the public-private dichotomy is more than just "striking". .
Republicans like Hatch don´t think very hard as to whether it is more important to vote for a bill because it is good for America or to vote against it because then you could possibly paint the Democratic president as a failure . This latter decision might actually allow your party to pick up seats in the next election. So this point just makes the decision for you. Now that was easy!
As a politician today, you pick your party and then work hard to make its policies the best policies to sell to the public because "bipartisanship" is no longer a viable legislative strategy. This is especially true for the Republicans. Whether it´s good for the people or whether it takes lies or the truth to sell it is apparently irrelevant.
Remember, in today´s politics as in the NFL, it´s only the winning that counts.
Copyright G.Ater 2010
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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