Now that the Republican Plan to Destroy Medicare™ has proven to be so incredibly unpopular with the American public, the GOP and their enablers in the Village Media are trying to shift voters’ focus away from that plan to the Democrats. Increasingly we hear the right-wing claim that Obama, Democrats and the Left don’t have any plan to “save” Medicare, which means that it will soon be driven into bankruptcy and go away on its own. Republicans, they argue, have to destroy Medicare in order to save it.
David Brooks may not be the worst such offender, but given his prime real estate over at The New York Times he could be the most influential. His latest column is classic Brooks, filled with false equivalencies, rhetorical straw men, and dubious comparisons all deployed in an effort to persuade his readers that the Republican Plan to Destroy Medicare™ will result in a consumer-driven, “continual, bottom-up process of [health care] innovation.” His “argument” such as it is, is a muddled mess, an exercise in rhetoric but not logic.
