Pat Buchanan on shutdown: ‘What we are witnessing here is the unfolding of the Big Lie’
One way or another, the battle of the budget and the debt ceiling will be over by All Hallows’ Eve.
Yet, as one looks deeper at the irreconcilable conflict behind the present clash, only a roaring optimist would imagine we shall ever know again the tranquility and unity of the Eisenhower-Kennedy years.
Consider the bile dumped upon tea-party Republicans by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and their camp followers in the national press.
What did the tea party do to deserve this? Answer: These extremists shut down the U.S. government, they’re holding America hostage, and they’re inflicting terrible suffering on innocent people.
But is this true?
Three times in a fortnight, the House has voted to fund every department, agency and program of the government – except Obamacare. Who, then, is truly shutting down the government?
What we are witnessing here is the unfolding of the Big Lie – the constant repetition of a transparent falsehood – to persuade a pliable public not only to believe it, but to recite it, as in Orwell’s “1984.”
Obamacare, we are told, was enacted by Congress, signed by the president, upheld by the Supreme Court, confirmed by Obama’s victory in 2012. To try to defund or reform it amounts to an attempted coup, an overturning of the election results of November.
But does not Congress have the power of the purse to fund or defund any program it chooses? Is that not in the Constitution?
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