It seems that the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru felt that it had been too long since a conservative had made the idiotic comparison between the Affordable Care Act and the Iraq War. So, on Monday, he decided to post a column at National Review Online doing just that. Yep, Ponnuru decided that it is perfectly fair to compare a war that was started under false pretenses that led to thousands of American casualties and the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives to a health care law.
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In his column, Ponnuru decided to take the same line of reasoning that Meet the Press host David Gregory did a few weeks ago when he pushed this same silly comparison. While Gregory at least had the temerity to point out that the ACA hasn’t led to the deaths of Americans, Ponnuru just did the dry comparison that both were massive undertakings that led to the question of credibility of the presidents responsible. Nowhere does he even mention the loss of lives or the thousands more American soldiers that were wounded and had their lives irrevocably changed forever. Unless you want to count the awful attempt at humor he starts his column off with: ‘Obama lies, insurance plans died.’
Throughout the articles, Ponnuru feels that it is perfectly acceptable to make the comparions. He even seems to think that President Obama’s transgressions are worse. In his mind, the Bush Administration honestly thought there were WMDs in Iraq and that the eventual realization that this was all false was not on them. It was, by his words, ‘not a knowing falsehood.’ Meanwhile, Obama knowingly lied about people being able to keep their insurance plans if they liked them. The fact that there have been some cancellations of policies that are not ACA compliant due to being complete junk is totally worse because the President knew that insurance companies may do this and didn’t make it clear back in 2010.
The fact that Ponnuru wrote this article is offensive enough. What is worse is that conservatives find no problem with this type of reasoning. In their mind, comparing the loss of thousands of lives and the complete invasion of a sovereign country under false pretenses to a law that was passed in order to provide millions of Americans with health insurance while curbing the overall cost of health care is A-OK. In fact, it is even fair to say that Obamacare is a BIGGER disaster than the Iraq War. That way, they can continue to try to redeem the absolute failure of the Bush Administration.
Sure, the National Review is a conservative publication, and Ponnuru is just providing red meat for the base that reads it. We should expect this type of journalism from the right, as they’re always going to go for absolute hyperbole when discussing the ACA, especially as with each passing day, the likelihood of it ever getting repealed or even changed significantly fades away. However, the sad part here is that right-leaning media like this isn’t just getting away with it, they have a compliant mainstream media complex that treats this like actual legit opinion. They get to spew this garbage on the Sunday shows, on nightly talk shows and during actual news broadcasts. By providing them this forum, the MSM is just as complicit in this as the right-wingers who come up with these idiotic talking points.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
