Memo to Eleanor Clift – one of the dumbest people (and that is saying a lot) on the shout fest “The McLaughlin Group”, the Democrats controlled both Houses of congress since 2006 and the White House the past 13 months. She is typical of the type of left-wingers who blame Obama’s failures not on his policies but on his not being aggressive enough in pushing a left-wing agenda.
by Archy Cary
Revisionist historians usually wait a few years before recounting events to fit their bias. But Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift is already transcribing the autopsy report on Obama’s health-care reform with the analytical skills of a revisionist historian.
In her February 12, 2010, piece entitled “What Obama Did Wrong: On health-care reform, the president didn’t repeat Clinton’s mistakes. Obama made new ones,” Clift spins her interpretation of events as though they represent fact.
Here’s how she does it:
Obama had to tackle health-care reform in his first year because (1) he made it a key campaign promise and (2) his base of support would have felt betrayed had he not. Okay, so health-care linked to his oft-used campaign phrase attributed to MLK…“the fierce urgency of now.” Clift writes that it’s easy to criticize him today for taking on the issue,
…now that we’ve seen what a hash Congress made of the reform effort.
She just couldn’t make her fingers type “now that we’ve see what a hash Democrats in Congress made of the reform effort.” So we have a clue to what follows right there in her first paragraph.
Teddy Kennedy’s endorsement propelled Obama to victory, she writes. It told “liberals and feminists and African-Americans” that is was “OK” to support Obama over Clinton. If I’m one of those people, I don’t like being told I needed to be told how to vote, but never mind that.
[…]
Clift’s selective memory of events is amazing. Obama turned over responsibility to write legislation to two inherently and historically competitive bodies – the Senate and the House. And, the Democrats in those two groups pulled a Hillary-as-First-Lady of their own, crafting their respective bills without Republican input.
When American citizens did something many legislators didn’t do – actually read the bills – they were outraged, and showed it. The lead “reform opponents” Clift mentions were ordinary citizens, taxpayers, people who, after all, deserve the “upper hand.”
In what is the most biased statement of her revisionist history of the failed health-care reform effort, Clift writes,
Republicans Orrin Hatch and John McCain spoke movingly at the Kennedy funeral mass about their friendship with the liberal lion, but Kennedy nostalgia did not dislodge a single Republican vote.
Oh, those cold-hearted Republicans.
Read the rest: Newsweek’s Clift Writes an Obama Apologist’s History of Failed Healthcare Reform
Tags: Archy Cary, Newsweek
