Steve King Won't Let Them Steal Your Liberty!

Somehow, this article from the horrible dishonesty factory "Newsmax" ended up in my inbox:

Steve King: Obamacare 'A Theft of Liberty'

 

 Rep. Steve King, a leader of House Republicans seeking the repeal of Obamacare, tells Newsmax that the healthcare reform law constitutes “a theft of the liberty of the American people” and repeal is an ultimate certainty.

Wow. How many ways can you be wrong in one sentence?

Let's see.

1. There is no such thing as "Obamacare."

2. No liberty is being stolen from anyone by healthcare reform, unless you mean the liberty to be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

3. Repeal is not only not a certainty, it has virtually no chance of getting through the Senate.

Other than that though, nice opening sentence.

The Iowa Republican also declares that Obamacare was the “core issue” that ended Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats’ control of the House, predicts that the Senate will go along with the House and vote for repeal, and says if President Obama does not sign a repeal bill then Republicans will defund healthcare reform until Americans elect a president in 2012 who will support repeal.

Really?  You think that healthcare reform is what swept you into the majority? Not "the economy, stupid?" Not the fact that Pelosi and the progressives were prevented from accomplishing anything by obstructionists in the Senate? Not the "enthusiasm gap" caused by ginning up phony fear and outrage amongst the most gullible and stupid among us while Democratic voters got discouraged by the lack of progress? No, I'm sure you're right. Americans voted out the Dems because they can't stand the thought of parents being able to keep their kids on their health plan for a few extra years. That's probably it.

Ahead of Wednesday’s anticipated vote in the House on Obamacare repeal, Rep. King is presenting hundreds of thousands petitions [sic] from Americans demanding the repeal.

Okay, couple of things. First of all, hundreds of thousands of petitions is not the same thing as hundreds of thousands of people signing petitions. Try typing "Healthcare Petition" into Google. There are tons of different petitions to which to affix one's signature.

Second, hundreds of thousands is really not all that many in a nation of over three hundred million people.

King was asked what message he is hoping to send. “I want to make sure that members of Congress on the Hill here and across the country understand how deeply and how broadly Americans have rejected Obamacare,” says King, who introduced repeal legislation in March.

Hmm, funny you should say that on the day that new polling is out suggesting that the opposite is true.

But as the House prepares to vote on repeal this week, public support for that has flagged. Only about 1 in 4 respondents said they wanted to do away with the law completely. Even among Republicans, repeal draws markedly less support than it did a few weeks ago: 49%, compared with 61% after the November election.

 (LA Times)

Only 49% of Republicans want to repeal "Obamacare." Those are your guys. You don't even have a majority among your own guys.

Referring to a new poll showing that strong opposition to Obamacare has fallen to its lowest level in more than a year, King explains: “I see different polls with different results. When you break it down, I’m still very confident that the American people reject Obamacare.

I assume that you're referring to right-wing pollsters like Rasmussen who usually frame the question something like "Would you rather repeal Obamacare or have sex with a rabid wolverine?"

"Would you favor repealing Obamacare knowing that if you do, you will be given your own Blackhawk helicopter and be made king of Spain?"

"Do you support Obamacare and the beheading of kittens?"

But real polls are showing what the AP poll referenced above shows. But I'm sure if you "break it down," you can convince yourself that the people really mean yes when they answer no.

“One of the things is, should we require employers to provide certain benefits, and sometimes the answer is as high as 59 percent. But it’s job-destroying, and if you ask the question, if you knew your employer was going to have to lay off so many people or not open up a certain number of jobs, would you still want to impose this mandate on your employer, I think a lot of Americans would change their mind. I think we’ve already won the debate.”

Yeah, see that's what we were just talking about. Of course you can get the answer you want if you phrase the question dishonestly. You can do that with anything. You could go to Pittsburgh and ask "Would you want the Steelers to win the Superbowl if it meant that they would celebrate by having wild sex with your wife?" and most guys, actually that's a bad example. I think Steelers fans would probably still say yes. 

“And when it comes to something that is unconstitutional, that is a theft of the liberty of the American people, then [there is no] price tag we can put on it. It’s too valuable. Our liberty is priceless, and we cannot be the country that we shall become if we’re going to become the ever-expanded dependency class living in a nanny state. And that’s what Obamacare does to us.”

"We can not be the country that we shall become if we're going to become the . . ." huh? Dang, that is some top-notch semi-coherence in the service of lies. It takes a real pro like Steve King to pull that off.

It almost makes you not notice that he's full of shit about the Constitution, that there is absolutely nothing to his "dependency / nanny-state" claim, and that the whole liberty theft thing is pure nonsense. Only the great Steve King can give you this kind of bs/gibberish hybrid.