Jonathan Gruber said that “the stupidity of the American voter” made it important for him and Democrats to hide Obamacare’s true costs from the public. “That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” said Gruber. “But I’d rather have this law than not.” In other words, the ends—imposing Obamacare upon the public—justified the means.
In fairness to Gruber, American voters are not the only people whose intelligence he questions;
elsewhere in the discussion, he describes New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.) as someone who "as far as I can tell, doesn't understand economics"
In other news:
The piece portrays Rhodes, Obama's top foreign policy speechwriter and arguably one of his most influential aides, as singularly in tune with his boss's thinking and narrowly focused on crafting a messaging machine to support it. It quotes Rhodes lamenting the ignorance of Washington reporters. ("They literally know nothing.") And it describes Rhodes, a former aspiring novelist, as focused on crafting a storyline and dismissing facts that don't fit.
Rhodes appears to try to keep secret news that Iran had seized 10 U.S. Navy sailors until after the president's State of the Union speech. The article quotes Rhodes and his aides describing how they used social media, journalists and friendly interest groups to disseminate White House-generated talking points about the Iran deal.
"We created an echo chamber," Rhodes said. "They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say."
David Albright, a physicist and arms control expert with the Science and International Security in Washington, said he was surprised to see a White House official "opening up this can of worms again." The intensity of the debate over the Iran deal left many in the arms control and policy world bruised, not the least because of the White House's take-no-prisoners approach, said Albright, who was briefed by the administration during the negotiations and remained neutral on the deal.
"It was, 'Are you with us or are you against us?'" Albright said, "The White House was looking for sound bites that beat the opposition, not necessarily sound bites that captured the truth of what was going on. I wish they were just putting out facts. They exaggerated and overstated to sell the deal."
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