The Obama campaign, still unsettled and reeling after walking into a very polite buzz saw named Mitt Romney last week, has finally coalesced around a new slogan: “Liar!” says Axelrod, says Plouffe, says Cutter, says Dean, says Barack Obama himself. Like a Greek chorus, the collective cries foul on the debate, asserting that Romney’s mendacity so disturbed our president’s sensibilities that he was rendered ineffective and passionless and weak and dull for 90 minutes — or something to that effect.
It’s a strange accusation coming from a president who insisted for more than a week that the September 11 attack on our embassy in Benghazi was a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video. That was either a lie or a confession of such profound stupidity as to render him unqualified to deliver mail, let alone run a country. Nevertheless, Team Obama has committed to this line of attack, so let’s take a quick look at the president’s signature achievement.
On March 21, 2010, Congressman Bart Stupak led a small band of pro-life Democrats as the last holdouts on the Obamacare bill. They were taking a principled stand against a provision that allocated federal dollars to subsidize abortions. That clause was supposed to be written out of the bill in a joint committee with the Senate, but Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts prevented any revision.
The stakes were huge. If the flawed bill didn’t pass, Obamacare would have to go back to the drawing board, and the president would have nothing to show for more than a year’s worth of effort and political capital.
To win the votes of Stupak’s crew, President Obama issued an executive order which stated that no public funds would be used to pay for abortions. Of course, the executive order was as meaningless then as it is today, but at the time, people believed him. Just 22 months later HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the betrayal official when she announced that abortion would be funded by Obamacare, and that members of religious institutions would be forced by law to act against their consciences.
Half of America believes that abortion is immoral. If Obamacare isn’t repealed by a Romney administration, every American taxpayer will be directly funding abortion in 2014.
Obamacare was passed on a lie, both to Bart Stupak and to the American people. The most recent cost estimate for Obamacare’s first decade is $2.6 trillion. That makes Barack Obama’s lie the costliest in American history.
I don’t know Mitt Romney personally. Maybe he is a liar. But he’s nothing compared to Obama.
Yates Walker is a conservative activist and writer. Before becoming involved in politics, he served honorably as a paratrooper and a medic in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He can be reached at yateswalker@gmail.com.
