Politics

Pat Buchanan, Chris Matthews AGREE: Obamacare rollout damaged the president [VIDEO]

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan and liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews both agreed that Obamacare’s disastrous rollout would damage President Barack Obama and his agenda during this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group.”

Buchanan, author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” warned the consequences of the 2010 healthcare reform law will deeply hurt Obama.

“The FTC has outlawed the bait and switch, John,” Buchanan said. “And that’s what this is. Before this week and during October, the problem for Obama was this was a metaphor for incompetence and disaster, and the rollout — horribly handled. This thing is more serious because it goes directly to the credibility of the president of the United States and to his integrity. Basically, what the president did was systematically deceive the American people as to what was the truth — that they were going to be able to keep their plan, and not only hundreds of thousands, but millions are losing their plans and being forced to buy new plans. I think this hurts the president deeply and personally in a place he has never been hurt before.”

Matthews, along with Clift defended the law. Matthews, author of “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked,” admitted the rollout was damaging for Obama but said detractors were missing a lot of positives about the law and the sides of the law break down along racial lines.

“Well, I think this is going to hurt him,” Matthews said. “There’s people like me who hate paperwork and we were promised you won’t even have to deal with this bureaucracy if you have a good health care plan. What nobody talked about was there’s just health care plans that don’t even cover hospitalization — that don’t cover anything, really, and people liked them because they have never been sick. I’m with Eleanor [Clift] on this point. I think it’s going to be duked out in the end over what your values are. I noticed African-Americans, for example, are for this plan because they really need it. Or the working poor — they don’t have health insurance. And the whites just happen to be the other group in this case. They’re against it. Look, this is going to be duked out on the question, ‘Do you want health insurance or not from the government?’”

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Jeff Poor