Another Republican reversal

As TPM says:

Paul Ryan and Republican leaders started off opposing the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts, then turned around and twice passed budgets that kept them, then campaigned against those cuts in the 2012 election, and are now embracing them again.

The details are here:

When he unveils his budget plan this week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will complete a 720-degree flip on President Obama’s cuts to Medicare providers in the Affordable Care Act.

As he revealed on “Fox News Sunday,” Ryan’s upcoming budget will sustain the cuts. ...

Ryan ran for vice president last year against Obama’s cuts to Medicare, which don’t target beneficiaries but instead lower reimbursements for hospitals and private insurance companies under Medicare Advantage.

“Obamacare takes $716 billion from Medicare to spend on Obamacare,” Ryan said last October. “Their own actuary from the administration came to Congress and said one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business as a result of this.”

And yet GOP budget chief’s new position is a return to an earlier stance. His House-passed blueprints in 2011 and 2012 also assumed the same level of Medicare savings as the Affordable Care Act, while repealing the rest of the law.

But even that was a reversal after Ryan and his GOP colleagues strenuously objected to the Medicare cuts before Obamacare passed, warning as he did during the 2012 campaign that the lower provider payments would harm services for current seniors.

In other words, Ryan and Republican leaders started off opposing the ACA’s Medicare cuts, then turned around and twice passed budgets that kept them, then campaigned against those cuts in the 2012 election, and are now embracing them again.

This isn't just the twists and turns which we tend to see from every politician, but a deliberate attempt to mislead voters. Medicare is very popular, so when running for office, Republicans claim to be defending Medicare from the Democrats. (Although, you really have to wonder how anyone can be dumb enough to believe that, don't you?)

But they also want to pretend to be fiscally prudent, so they adopt the same cuts for their own budget plans. That really takes a lot of gall, don't you think? And they don't just switch positions once or twice, but over and over again, expecting that ignorance, apathy, and Fox 'News' will provide all the cover they need.

Is it any wonder that Republicans rely on low-information voters? I'm continually reminded of this when it comes to 'Obamacare,' too.

Obamacare had its start in a right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation, as a free-market, insurance company-friendly alternative to the single-payer health care plans of other developed countries. It was widely supported in the Republican Party, and Mitt Romney was praised for pushing it and signing it into law in Massachusetts.

But all that ended when the Democrats, in a spirit of bipartisanship (and because most Democratic politicians are rather conservative themselves), adopted it, too. Instantly, the GOP's own plan became 'socialism' with 'death panels,' a deadly threat to Mom, apple pie, and the American way.

Is there anything Barack Obama could propose which wouldn't get the same treatment from today's  Republican Party? Even when he nominated a conservative Republican for Secretary of Defense, that was filibustered by Senate Republicans!

And now, here's Paul Ryan with yet another Republican flip-flop, proposing (again) the same thing they campaigned bitterly against last fall. It's just astonishing, isn't it? How can they get away with this, over and over again? Either American voters are really dumb, or our media are really bad. Or both.