Joel Benenson, the lead pollster for President Obama, wrote an op-ed piece in today's Washington Post that (surprise) speaks in favor of the president's version of health care reform. He not only extols what he believes are the virtues of Obamacare, he attempts to prove that the American people have been mislead by Republicans and it is the Republicans who will suffer politically if the bill is pushed through the legislative process by the Democrats. (source)

Continued...

Here are some of the lowlights from the article:

"Health care and health-care reform are complex issues for policy experts, let alone for the rest of us."
Also known as the old 'the American people are just too stupid to get it' argument has been coming from the Obama administration for months. The day after losing his supermajority in the Senate, the president claimed his error was thinking the American people were smart enough to agree with his agenda. "That I do think is a mistake of mine," he said. "I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we're making a good rational decision here, then people will get it." (source) And so Mr. Obama has given speech after speech praising his hugely unpopular and obscenely expensive program that attacks insurance companies, Republicans, Wall Street, "wealthy" Americans and just about anyone else he can think of. He makes wild and empty promises about what his plan would accomplish and how it will be 'deficit neutral' while engaging in fuzzy math and downright lies desperately hoping his assumption that the American people are stupid is correct. It's not.

"There's no question that a majority of Americans oppose a government-run health system. But there is no government-run health care in the plan, and not a single American would be forced into any government-run program."
The plan doesn't mandate the drowning of puppies either. In a classic style of one who is losing an argument, Mr. Benenson employs what is known as a straw man fallacy. For those unfamiliar with the term, the straw man fallacy is employed when someone simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. Here's how it usually works:

Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

Mr. Benenson has completely ignored the American people's position that Obamacare is way too expensive, allows the government to take over one-sixth of the US economy, will drive up costs while decreasing the availability of medical professionals and facilities, will force Americans to purchase health insurance whether they want to or not and plenty of other valid reasons for opposing this plan. But by attacking the non-existent anti-government-run program position, Mr. Benenson thinks he can dupe the American people into believing all their valid objections are invalid.

"The central components of the plan - a ban on denying coverage of preexisting conditions, closing the Medicare "doughnut hole" on the drug coverage gap for seniors, creating an insurance exchange in which small business and those without coverage could buy private insurance at competitive rates - are all supported by solid majorities, from 60 percent to 81."
All true but hardly a solid argument for passing the entirety that is Obamacare. If someone told you that they would give you $20.00 if you agreed to let them drown a puppy would you suddenly believe drowning puppies is a good thing? Even if you were desperate enough for the money to agree to let them do it, you wouldn't suddenly believe drowning that puppy is A-OK with you. So why would the American people be convinced that the horrible parts of the Obamacare plan are acceptable simply because it contains a few decent ideas? As the Republicans have been saying for the past year, let's start over with a blank sheet of paper and create a less massive health care reform bill that only includes the good ideas the American people want.