She’s baaack. The woman James Fallows said “deserved a career-achievement award for ‘most destructive effect on public discourse by a single person’” has returned like a plague of locusts to poison a political season, just as in 2009 she emerged 16 years after her disgraceful appearance in 1993. She is truly the “Fake McCaughey.”
Why does she deserve Fallows’ award? Let’s review:
1. 1993: Lying to Kill Health Care
Hillary Clinton’s health care bill was defeated in 1993, resulting in 20 more years of avoidable illness, death and bankruptcy for millions. At first, it appeared the bill had a good chance to pass, but a turning point came after publication of No Exit, an article by Betsy McCaughey in Andrew Sullivan’s The New Republic. As described by Benjy Sarlin in 2009:
McCaughey’s piece painted the Clinton plan as a nightmare in the making that would “prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better” and leave millions of Americans with insufficient treatment thanks to government rationing.
The Clinton administration put out a detailed response and noted that provisions in the bill specifically said that “nothing in this act shall be construed as prohibiting... an individual from purchasing health-care services” despite McCaughey's key assertions that patients would be prevented from paying their doctors or seeking private coverage. But the meme stuck. When the dust had settled in the 1993-1994 health-care wars, Newt Gingrich singled out McCaughey's article as “the first decisive breakpoint” in the plan's support.
Although The New Republic under Franklin Foer later apologized for No Exit, Sullivan never did, saying he “was comfortable running it as a provocation to debate.” (This and his publication of Charles Murray’s racist The Bell Curve, should be considered by those who may find Sullivan a “reasonable conservative.” I’m looking at you Bill Maher.)
2. 2009: Mother of Death Panels
Sarlin wrote on May 15, 2009, as the new Obama Administration was rolling out its health care plan, and the 1993 debacle was a cautionary tale for the new Administration. Sure enough, Just two months later, on July 16, 2009. McCaughey appeared on the late Fred Thompson’s radio show to call the Obamacare end-of-life counseling provision "a vicious assault on elderly people" that will cut your life short:”
McCaughey, 60, is back as a self-styled expert whose writings on Obama's health care plans are increasingly being cited by agitated conservatives at town hall meetings as proof - falsely, other experts and the President himself say - that he wants to "pull the plug on Grandma."
"I believe it's an important public service," McCaughey said yesterday of her commentaries, which spin snippets of legislative language and medical-journal essays by a few Obama advisers to paint a terrifying picture.
McCaughey’s outrageous charge may never have gone viral if Sarah Palin hadn’t followed up by coining the term “death panels” in a Facebook post rated “Pants on Fire” by Politifact:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
But despite Palin’s phrase-making, McCaughey was the real mother of Death Panels — a bizarro-world Daenerys Targaryen, birthing dragons that spit lies instead of fire.
Although the “Death Panels” lie didn’t kill Obamacare, it did alter the legislation, and set the stage for events like the crazed town halls of the summer of 2009, the election of Scott Brown in early 2010 and the Republican takeover of the House in November 2010.
3. 2016: The Perfect Trump Spokesperson
McCaughey has been largely under the radar for the last 7 years, but she has now signed up with Trump. Talking Points Memo dug up some of her more recent “policy” positions I missed:
- She urged Republicans to use a possible breach of the debt ceiling to blackmail Obama into repealing Obamacare and cheered on government shutdowns.
- "The debt-ceiling battles of 1995 and 2011 are what the framers intended in devising checks and balances," she wrote.
- She's sympathized with the Bundy family's refusal to abide by federal land management law and sided with anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller's fight to post ads for her organization on city transit.
- Weighing in on the debate over litigating campus sexual assault, McCaughey wrote:
Maturing heterosexual males are wired to pursue women for sex. And maturing females learn — often through trial and error — how to respond. When young women want sex, they learn to tilt their head or smile. And when they don’t want sex, they need to learn to firmly push away, convincingly say 'no' or just get up and leave.
In the absence of force (or intoxication), there is nothing stopping them except their confusion."
I know. Charming.
Today we were treated to her policy chops in a CNN “debate” with Trump biographer David Cay Johnston, moderated by Michael Smerconish. Johnston set out facts about Trump’s business failures and ties to the Russian mob. Smerconish asked McCaughey if she wanted to respond. Of course, she didn’t say a word in response to Johnston’s facts, but launched into a tirade about:
- the supposed disastrous economy,
- how Trump would fix it by lowering corporate taxes (in the process lying about US taxes being the highest in the world),
- how Trump’s financial disclosure was 103 pages long and Hillary’s was only 11 pages long so those tax returns don’t matter, and
- what about those Goldman Sachs speeches anyway.
When the carnage ended, Smerconish wrapped it up by saying the “correct answer” is, “We ought to see everything she said to Goldman Sachs. And we ought to see all of his tax returns.”1
Both Sides!!
1 If all candidates are required to release the text of speeches, how come nobody ever asks Trump to release the text of his speeches? Anytime a Republican mentions her speeches in response to his tax returns, Democrats should demand both his tax returns and speeches.