We Can't Let The Smoking Gun Become A Mushroom Cloud

Some days I feel Karl Rove is a liberal Democrat pulling an elaborate trick a la The Yes Men. His Wall Street Journal op-eds have consistently tagged Barack Obama for the sins of George W. Bush. It gets stranger and stranger.

On the campaign trail last year, Barack Obama promised to end the “politics of fear and cynicism.” Yet he is now trying to sell his health-care proposals on fear.

At his news conference last week, he said “Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage, or lose their job. . . . If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction.”

Karl Rove, ladies and gentlemen, criticizing an opponent for peddling the politics of fear.

Give him a hand.

I think the conclusion to be gained is that you can pretty much call anything "the politics of fear" if you're afraid of the outcome. And it's easy to dismiss conclusions as fearmongering, because then you don't have to concern yourself with whether or not they're true. There's a difference between stating the knowable reality about the current trajectory of health care spending and its impacts, and making up 935 lies to hype an imminent threat from Iraq.