ROVE SHOULD READ HIS OWN COLUMN…. Karl Rove devotes his latest Wall Street Journal column to yet another attack on the Affordable Care Act, but this one was slightly more interesting than most. Usually, Rove’s pieces contradict other positions he used to hold. This is the column in which the end of the piece contradicts the beginning of the piece.
Rove starts on the wrong foot, arguing that “ObamaCare has recently been dealt three body blows.” The three are (1) the repeal bill in the House; (2) the repeal bill in the Senate; and (3) a district court ruling in Florida. These have to be the weakest body blows of all time. The House bill passed and then died; the Senate bill failed and was hardly noticed; and the court ruling will be appealed, and is no more important than two other rulings that came to the opposite conclusion.
But then Rove starts getting more specific, blasting the law for cutting unnecessary Medicare spending, which may make “Granny” vulnerable.
Which leads to Rove’s conclusion: what’s needed are Medicare cuts.
Thanks in good measure to Mr. Obama’s profligacy, the entitlement crisis is no longer a vague, abstract concern. More and more Americans understand the current course leads to a disaster for the nation’s finances. And so the public may be willing to go places and do things that in the past it may not have.
This is an unusual and fluid moment. My hunch is voters are more inclined than ever to reward the political party that addresses entitlement reform — and more inclined than ever to punish the one that fiddles while America’s fiscal house burns.
I see. So, Karl Rove is of the opinion that Democrats did something awful by cutting unnecessary Medicare spending without touching Medicare benefits, which clears the way for Republicans do something he considers worthwhile — cutting Medicare.
I’d be surprised if Rove wrote his columns himself, but whoever wrote the first half of the piece probably should have been in touch with whoever wrote the second half.
Postscript: Rove’s column also touts the Medicare prescription drug benefit he helped get through Congress. What he neglected to mention was that Part D was approved through remarkable corruption, and cost roughly the amount of the Affordable Care Act, all which Rove and his GOP allies added to the deficit — unlike Democrats, who actually paid for their bill.
What was that about “profligacy”?
