{"id":29179,"date":"2014-12-14T00:03:15","date_gmt":"2014-12-14T05:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29179"},"modified":"2014-12-13T16:58:44","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T21:58:44","slug":"jonah-goldberg-on-the-gruber-hearings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/14\/jonah-goldberg-on-the-gruber-hearings\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah Goldberg on the Gruber hearings"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this week’s Goldberg File<\/em>, Jonah Goldberg<\/a> talks about the show Jonathan Gruber put on in front of some Washington political types:<\/p>\n

I learned from Twitter this morning that Gustave Flaubert, born this day in 1821, said, \u201cThe art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.\u201d So, as Jay-Z says every morning he enters a music studio and as Joe Biden says every time President Obama gives him a fresh 64-pack of crayons, \u201cLet\u2019s make some art, bitches.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with Jonathan Gruber. I have to say I was disappointed by the hearings. Oh, sure, it was good theater-as-human sacrifice of the sort Washington does so well (though I am glad they stopped short of rectal rehydration).<\/p>\n

But this was one of those moments where they really could have put the system on trial. Gruber\u2019s consistent answer was that he\u2019s a shabby, shallow, little man who belittles others, including the American people, to make himself look good. \u201cI tried to make myself seem smarter by demeaning others.\u201d<\/p>\n

In almost every exchange, Gruber fell back on language you\u2019d expect from a stockbroker tied up in an S&M dungeon. I did it because I am a flea! A worm! I am no master of the universe, I am nothing! Punnnniissshhh meee!<\/p>\n

All that was missing were some riding-crop and melted-candle-wax welts, and maybe a shorn scrotum. But, hey man, it\u2019s a defense.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not a good one. You can blame your arrogance for calling the American voters stupid, but you can\u2019t blame your arrogance for claiming that the bill was designed to hide taxes and deceive the public. If I stab someone 34 times, the jury might want to hear about my arrogance, but whether I\u2019m arrogant or humble, it doesn\u2019t change what I did \u2014 and apologizing for it doesn\u2019t clarify where the body is buried.<\/p>\n

Gruber\u2019s strategy of emotional self-abasement was very clever because it distracted from the central arguments of fact.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

As for Gruber, he said this week that he wasn\u2019t an architect of Obamacare. And yet, for several years he let the New York Times<\/em>, The New Republic<\/em>, PBS, and countless other media outlets describe him as exactly that. That label was of great financial value to him. But it was probably of greater social, psychological, and professional value. And that is probably why he seems to have not once taken the time to ask them to stop calling him that. Gruber is of a class of people who take great satisfaction from the belief that they are not only smarter and better than normal Americans, but that their superiority entitles them to manipulate the public and system in whatever way they think necessary.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another reason Gruber never corrected anybody when they described him as an architect of Obamacare: Because it\u2019s true!<\/em><\/p>\n

Which leads to another important point: Gruber\u2019s a huge, monumental, Brobdingnagian liar.<\/p>\n

To believe his testimony before Congress is to believe that on one occasion after another, he baldly lied over and over again to his peers, colleagues, students, and friends. Darrell Issa sort of gets at this here at the end of Gowdy\u2019s interrogation when he asks Gruber, \u201cDid anybody come up to you and tell you that what you were saying was inappropriate?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an interesting question and tells you a lot about the sovereign contempt the expert class has for the American people. But a better question would be, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t anybody correct you on your factual claims? Or simply say \u2018What you\u2019re saying isn\u2019t true\u2019?\u201d Gruber was on panels with other health-care experts. The audiences were full of people who were deeply informed about Obamacare and all its details. And yet no one said, \u201cHey, that\u2019s not the way it happened.\u201d Why? Because Gruber was telling the truth when he said they had to deceive the American people. And before you ask me what proof I have, I would like to direct you to the fact that Barack Obama deceived the American people over and over and over again when he said things like \u201cYou can keep your doctor\u201d and \u201cYou can keep your insurance\u201d etc. (and not one liberal journalist cheerleader for Obamacare ever felt compelled to push back on this obvious lie). Are we really so stunned that the same president might be willing to play accounting games with the CBO?<\/p>\n

Sure maybe Gruber exaggerated his role or involvement. Maybe he embellished this or that. But you can\u2019t exaggerate a lie; you can only exaggerate the truth. For years he told the truth to anyone who would listen, and now that it\u2019s politically problematic he says it was all a lie.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re forced to choose: Was he lying when talking to countless audiences full of peers, colleagues, and experts, or was he lying in front of Congress in order to save his team any further embarrassment and preserve a law he\u2019s sincerely proud of (because he was an architect of it)? Personally, I think you\u2019d have to be too stupid to beat Joe Biden at tic-tac-toe to think the \u201creal\u201d Gruber testified before Congress this week. But whichever side you come down on this question, one thing has been established: He\u2019s a huge liar<\/em>. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week’s Goldberg File, Jonah Goldberg talks about the show Jonathan Gruber put on in front of some Washington political types: I learned from Twitter this morning that Gustave Flaubert, born this day in 1821, said, \u201cThe art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.\u201d So, as Jay-Z says every morning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,28,53,13],"tags":[698,937,985],"class_list":["post-29179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-congress","tag-obamacare","tag-washingtondc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7AD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29180,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29179\/revisions\/29180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}