Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Here's a hilariously idiotic ad from Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden of Nevada, who is running to replace Harry Reid. Now, Reid badly needs to be replaced. But not by this dolt who -- in the same goddamn commercial -- criticizes Reid for trying to "weaken Medicare" AND for pushing health care reform because "government run health care is wrong." Seriously. Here's the transcript. Video is below the fold.
As a mom I know one-size-fits-all clothes don't fit, aren't comfortable and are seldom a bargain. So why does Harry Reid want to force one-size-fits-all government health care on us? Harry Reid thinks Washington knows best, but I think we the people know best. Harry Reid's big government health care plan will raise taxes, put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor, weaken Medicare, kill jobs, push us further into debt. I'm Sue Lowden and I approve this message because government run health care is wrong.
Politics
Comments
Technically even better than Sarah Palin's 'get the guvmint off the back of private enterprise by increasing regulation and oversight' proposal, because both halves of the contradiction came in the same sentence.
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | March 12, 2010 9:27 AM
What is it with the inability to make a coherent argument? Doesn't anyone check the copy for stupid before the idiot of the week spouts it?
Posted by: MikeMa | March 12, 2010 9:31 AM
While Washington may not know best I highly doubt "we the people"* know any better. It isn't like the US has a surplus in medical, economic and financial experts.
*Especially since that is probably code for "Real Americans".
Posted by: Jeremy Shaffer | March 12, 2010 9:42 AM
Now remind me what "Real Americans" is code for, or are there fake Americans made out of plasticine running around?
Posted by: Matty | March 12, 2010 9:49 AM
Why would they want to go and do something like that?!? It would take away all of their best arguments!
Posted by: James Sweet | March 12, 2010 10:01 AM
Roughly, "Real Americans" = "Americans who can't tell or don't care that Sarah Palin is a moron". They wouldn't express it that way, of course, but that's the idea.
Posted by: chancelikely | March 12, 2010 10:04 AM
So what if she's incoherent? If Rich Lowry sees starbursts, she's a qualified candidate.
Posted by: Dr X | March 12, 2010 10:09 AM
Absolutely. You can recognize them by the dark coloration of their plasticine.
Posted by: xebecs | March 12, 2010 10:15 AM
If you reasoning skills are this bad, the stupid is a feature, not a bug.
Posted by: kehrsam | March 12, 2010 10:24 AM
Matty at 4- The current crop of conservatives would say otherwise but the definition of "Real American" was summed up nicely by The Waco Kid, played by Gene Wilder, in the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles:
Posted by: Jeremy Shaffer | March 12, 2010 10:34 AM
Jon Stewart on The Daily Show demonstrated the problems with defining "Real Americans" as those living in small towns in America's "Heartland" (the other ones I suppose we would have to call "Un Americans"). What if you are a veteran, but lives in one of the Traitor States in the East? Or, what if you are a Republican but lives in a baby-killing atheist city like New York?
Orwell observed the ability to simultaneously believe in two contradictory things without perceiving any contradiction, which he called "doublethink", a quality that we see far too much of.
Posted by: Birger Johansson | March 12, 2010 10:40 AM
"Nonsense! I believe six impossible thing before breakfast." The credo of moonbats and wingnuts everywhere! - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJAck | March 12, 2010 10:50 AM
The truly pathetic thing is she leads Reid in the polls by a commanding double digit margin. If the Democrats were smart at all, they'd sit Reid down and run someone else. Obama has approval ratings ranging from 50% to 56% in the state, Reid's numbers range in the mid 30s.. Rasmussen actually has Reid behind all three Republican challengers, even the city council woman who makes Sarah Palin look qualified.
Reid is toast, but the last thing we need is another moron Republican that makes Reid seem like a genius.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 12, 2010 11:01 AM
Is this from a 'My First Political Campaign' handbook? It reads like her team is made up of fourteen-year-olds whose last campaign was for Class President.
Posted by: me | March 12, 2010 11:07 AM
I'd rather have a bureaucrat (that I can elect out of office) between me and my doctor than a greedy CEO and board of directors that I can never do a damn thing about.
Posted by: Reverend Rodney | March 12, 2010 11:18 AM
Basically, Real Americans are those that vote Republican, even to their own detriment. Everyone else is just part of an invasive species that is trying to take over a country that the Real Americans feel entitled to for some unknown reason. This is especially ironic because even Native Americans are presumed to have less of a right to this land the Real Americans if they don't vote the "correct" way.
Posted by: catgirl | March 12, 2010 11:27 AM
What are you talking about? See, you actually vote for the CEO and board of directors with your dollar.
Presumably you are getting health insurance through your employer (if not, you are already fucked three ways from Sunday, so we'll just proceed on this assumption) so yeah, I guess you don't directly get to vote with your dollar... but your employer gets to vote with their dollar!
What's that you say? The employer's primary incentive is to keep costs down, not to provide quality health insurance? Well sure, but you can influence your employer by choosing whether or not to be employed by them! See, with the booming economy we have now, if an employer offers a shitty health plan, you can always just find a new job with a different empl--
Oh, the economy's not booming right now? Well... Still! Capitalism works, you see, under any and all circumstances. If your employer is not voting with their dollars the way you would like them to, and you can't find a job with a better health plan, all you need to do is quit your job, stop paying your mortgage, and let your family starve to death on the streets!
If you can't vote directly, and you can't vote with your dollar, then you vote by pimping your daughter for bread money. Don't you libtards get it?! Capitalism always works in every situation. It says so in the Bible!
Posted by: James Sweet | March 12, 2010 11:27 AM
@15
People don't seem to understand that the HMO paper pusher gets his bonus by keeping you from getting the healthcare you paid for. He has financial motive to deny you care.
Whatever the motivations of the alleged government bureaucrat, they are not personal financial motivations. Theoretically, his denial of your care will reduce government spending and, potentially, your taxes.
Posted by: The Gregarious Misanthrope | March 12, 2010 11:30 AM
Yeah, I've never understood the conservative reasoning on this one. They don't like government bureaucrats (which is actually understandable), yet they have no problem with private-sector bureaucrats who are 10 times worse. Politicians at least pretend to care about doing what's best for the public; people who work for private insurance companies are actually supposed to pay out as few claims as possible, and they're harder to get rid of. Why trust them so much?
Posted by: catgirl | March 12, 2010 11:42 AM
They seem to forget there already is a bureaucrat between you and your doctor - it's someone from the healthcare company that has to decide if they will cover your condition/operation/etc.
Posted by: robert | March 12, 2010 11:52 AM
I'm lost as to why the same people will say 1) That you should pay for your own healthcare so you can have whatever you want and can afford; and 2)If goverment funded care is available you won't be able to get the treatment you want and can afford.
Is there anything in your numerous and confusing suggestions for reform that would stop patients as we put "going private" if they don't like what the government doctor says?
Posted by: Matty | March 12, 2010 11:53 AM
I'm impressed that she managed to cram every Republican talking point short of death panels into such a short ad. But leaving aside the government/Medicare angle, what is she blathering on about with the "one size fits all" nonsense? The health care plan is about as far as one size fits all as you can possibly get, short of paying out of pocket for individual treatments/doctor visists. I mean, the central point of it is to set up an exchange to allow people to choose what insurance they want, and to vastly improve the competition in individual insurance.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 12, 2010 12:00 PM
Posted by: James Hanley | March 12, 2010 12:07 PM
Given how prevalent the deconstructionist concept is among Republicans that you can make reality, I'm not so sure if this is stupidity and not simply gross cynicism and a depth-less disdain for the I.Q. of her state's voters.
I wonder what it must be like for old Republicans to have spent most of their lives railing against the "socialism" of Johnson's Medicare program only to find themselves now, in their seniority, railing against any attempt by the government to lay their hands on the program, as if it were some private entity.
Posted by: Julian | March 12, 2010 12:15 PM
Lowden is blonde, reasonably attractive, and a mom. From the right-wing perspective, that makes her qualified to be supreme commander of the federation. That fact that she says completely idiotic things is just icing on the cake.
Posted by: James Hanley | March 12, 2010 12:15 PM
So why does Harry Reid want to force one-size-fits-all government health care on us?
Wouldn't one-size-fits-all government health care be that everyone gets an appendectomy regardless of their medical problem? If one still visits a doctor, and if the doctor still examines the patient, and the doctor still prescribes a treatment appropriate for the illness, isn't that not one-size-fits-all?
Posted by: Chiroptera | March 12, 2010 12:18 PM
I've never really understood the "bureaucrat between you and your doctor" thing. I live in Canada, and the only bureaucrat between me and my doctor is her receptionist, who seems to do her job well enough.
On a related topic, why does it seem like every single Republican woman I've ever heard of is nuts? I'm not saying Sue Lowden is as crazy as Michelle Bachmann or Katherine Harris, but she seems to be missing a few marbles.
Now that I think about it, though, I can't name any Republican men who aren't stone cold crazy. It's probably just the news sources I choose. There's got to be a few that aren't insane, right? Right?
Posted by: Captain Mike | March 12, 2010 12:42 PM
Ginger Yellow @ 22 points out one of the ad's lies beyond the logical fallacies Ed notes. Another is the idea that the Senate Bill puts a bureaucrat between us and our healthcare. Her intention is clearly a fear tactic that we'll have less health care options available because of big government getting in the way of us and our doctor. However that is simply not true, the Bill provides access to care which is not currently available. We will collectively have far more access to our doctors than we collectively have now.
The current bill would provide health care to people to whom its unavailable by providing a universal mandate with affordability credits.
The current bill would provide coverage for people that want health care but are denied coverage since they can't get insured, either because of a pre-exsisting condition, loss of their job but can't afford COBRA, or other reason. This is an important reform measure.
The current bill would expand coverage opportunities for those in the exchanges which are eligible for affordability credits given the confidently held assumption that people will expand their coverage. It should also expand coverage even for those who don't get credits since the exchanges will increase competition in many states; I certainly plan to expand my coverage when they become available.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 12, 2010 12:58 PM
Wow! A blonde Michelle Bachmann. I feel all tingly, also, too.
Posted by: Grumpy | March 12, 2010 2:06 PM
@23,15
Hopefully, you can vote out of the office the person who appoints the administrator who sets the policy for the bureaucrat between you and your doctor. Not the same ,but ...
@22
The bureaucrat between you and your doctor is the death panel. Be afraid, be very afraid.
@18,19
Of course having an insurance company bureaucrat between you and your doctor is better than one from the government. Because the magical free-market fairies are always better than gumment drones.
Posted by: natural cynic | March 12, 2010 3:36 PM
People are people, so you get some good ones and bad ones in both institutions. But for the most part, I've had better luck pursuing redress of grievances with the magical free-market fairies than the gummint drones. They have more reason to keep me happy--they want me to come back again, whereas the governmental folks don't really benefit that much from seeing me again. There's some important incentives shaping behavior there.
And I'll say this--at least no private business has ever tried to retroactively charge me more after I had paid them, gotten a receipt, and received the service for which I had paid, whereas one government agency--City College of San Francisco--tried to do just that.
I'm not going to repeat the silly "bureaucrat between me and my doctor line," nor am I going to pretend that our current system is to be admired (I agree it needs to be reformed). But I will point out that anyone who thinks a government system will be better on the basis that governments behave better than private businesses hasn't been paying very close attention.
I understand the distrust of the free market, I really do. What I don't get is the trust in the government, despite what we see happening regularly. We're all familiar with the logic that evidence against one theory is not evidence for another one. The same logic holds true here--evidence of the market's perils and abuses is not evidence in favor of government being any better.
Posted by: James Hanley | March 12, 2010 5:56 PM
Birger Johansson "Orwell observed the ability to simultaneously believe in two contradictory things without perceiving any contradiction, which he called 'doublethink', a quality that we see far too much of."
It's beyond that. It's UnThink.
James Hanley "Um, RevRod, in what political system do you get to vote for the bureaucrats?"
Well, if you hate, say, the EPA, you can vote Republican and watch them cripple it by loading it with people who are against its mission and, in many cases, worked for the very groups they're supposed to keep an eye on (later, moving back to those groups). Or you can vote Democrat and watch them chip ineffectually around the edges. That'll show those bureaucrats!
Captain Mike "There's got to be a few that aren't insane, right? Right?"
The RINOs? There are some, awaiting the next Purge.
James Hanley "The same logic holds true here--evidence of the market's perils and abuses is not evidence in favor of government being any better."
Does the collective experience of virtually every other First World country (and a bunch of the rest), using wildly different "socialized systems" on healthcare count?
For that matter, with as many jokes and complaints I've heard about American DMVs, the worst problem I've ever had with the Canadian ones was having to drive to three different places to get a used car transfered, registered and insured*. The rest of the time, I've only had to stand in line for a short period in an air-conditioned hall before signing something and having a shitty picture taken.
Maybe you guys should try not being shitty at government.
*...and that was Ontario where insurance was privatized, if memory serves. Interesting side note: one year's insurance cost more than the car, which seemed kind of steep, even for a new driver with minimum coverage. Less than nine months and a move west later, and better (SOCIALIZED!!!) insurance cost a third of what it did before.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 12, 2010 8:30 PM
James Hanley wrote:
You stole my thunder. I didn't even care about all the stupid things she said.
What really irritated me is that she played the mommy card. I hate it when women do this. I don't care how many kids you have bitch, what are your qualifications for the job? Being a mom is great life experience I'm sure (although I hope I never actually find out), but why is it the primary qualification idiots like this woman pull out? Do they actually put this on their resumes?
And if so, can I put that I'm a swell aunt or a good daughter on mine?
What's especially irritating is that they think they're being all progressive about gender equality by saying that being a mom is about the best qualification a woman can have. How positively uplifting.
Posted by: Leni | March 12, 2010 8:50 PM
Leni "What's especially irritating is that they think they're being all progressive about gender equality by saying that being a mom is about the best qualification a woman can have."
*And Paul's. And the Lord's. True story.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 12, 2010 9:28 PM
FiveThirtyEight and Electoral-Vote both have Reid winning the election. Not exactly ideal but better than this idiot.
Posted by: Brandon | March 12, 2010 9:45 PM
Ignore what I said. It looks like Reid would get trounced but Goodman will probably win. Even better.
Posted by: Brandon | March 12, 2010 9:49 PM
no private business has ever tried to retroactively charge me more after I had paid them, gotten a receipt, and received the service for which I had paid
then you are a very lucky person.
i, on the other hand, am very familiar with the "i called to cancel this service three months ago. why are you still charging me?" phone conversation.
Posted by: cleek | March 13, 2010 7:04 PM
A few decades ago I had a business for which I bought commercial insurance. Part of the coverage was for the glass storefront. The agent measured everything, calculated the square footage and wrote it into the contract, which we both signed. Two years later a new guy came out to renew the policy, on which I had never filed a claim. He took a look at the front, re-measured it and discovered that the first guy had mis-measured, and I had 25% more glass area than previously calculated. OK, fine, write it up, see you next year. A few weeks later the company sent me a retroactive bill for the difference over the previous two years, pay up or we cancel. A call to the insurance commissioner's office revealed that that was perfectly legal under California law.
Can't say I've ever had something happen like that in my dealings with the government.
Posted by: Pieter B | March 14, 2010 4:16 AM
James #17: You left out the standard glibertarian response: if you're not satisfied with your health insurance, start your own insurance company!
All markets look free and full of competition when you count "DIY" as an alternative. But outside of computer software, you can't simply substitute brainpower for capital the way the residents of Galt's Gulch could (the cost of a developer's wet-dream workstation is about what you'd pay for a used car in a color other than Bondo. In most other fields, switching from consumer to producer on a dime isn't so easy).
Posted by: ebohlman | March 14, 2010 10:00 PM
Health care reform doesn't mandate everyone take the same health insurance, just imposes a minimum standard.
By her logic, since one-size-fits-all clothes are bad, public nudity laws should be overturned.
Posted by: MPL | March 20, 2010 4:38 PM