The following might be the stupidest thing I’ve read this week. And considering the week we’re having, that’s saying something. The Associated Press’ Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, in trying to explain why the White House is suddenly embracing the term “Obamacare,” lets loose this nugget of dumbness:
“It’s rhetorical jujitsu,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on political communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center.
Republicans coined the term as an insult, linking Obamacare to an apocalyptic litany of woes they contended it would bring about: rationing, soaring costs, unemployment, death panels — even if they were nowhere mentioned in the law.
Oh, they’re not? You mean the law doesn’t actually say “This is going to kill jobs and raise prices and make rationing necessary, and who knows what other potential consequences”? Well then, I guess those things are impossible.
Nice try, wingnuts!