The biggest liars in modern American political history

When Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were caught lying, the impeachable consequences for their dishonesty were largely felt by them and their sycophantic defenders alone. The average American may have been appalled by both leaders, but they had very little to no effect on the daily lives of most all Americans.

That’s why it could be argued President Barack Obama’s “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” lie was the worst in modern American political history.

Aside from the fact he shamelessly repeated it or a variation thereof over 30 times, it resulted in millions of Americans either losing their health care or seeing their premiums soar. Obama’s lie was costly to his political party as well, as Democrats lost over a thousand elections since its passing in 2009.

I said Obama’s lie was the worst for a reason — it has now been surpassed.

It is immoral to campaign on a lie, and then punish those who voted for you because they believed it. However, it’s even worse to campaign on saving people from the Dems’ health care consequences for eight years, and then leave them hanging out to dry once they vote you into office.

That’s precisely what the Republican Party has done.

Though it’s offered the country basically nothing in terms of a substantive alternative to progressivism this decade, Republicans have surged to their largest number of elected officials nationwide since before the Great Depression. Primarily because they promised to save the American people from an Obamacare that was designed to fail from the beginning (in order to pave the way for single-payer).

Yet, for the last five months, Republicans have failed repeatedly to deliver on that promise, which was cemented by last week’s embarrassing failure theater held by the GOP-controlled Senate. That was culminated by the doomed vote on the so-called “skinny repeal” (i.e. “scam”), which ironically was held in the dead of night with few watching. Not too different from how Democrats originally shoved Obamacare down our throats in the wee hours, too.

Except when Democrats defy our Constitution and the public trust, it’s to advance something they really believe in. When Republicans do so, it’s usually to preserve or advance something Democrats … really believe in.

But we shouldn’t be surprised, unless we’d like to continue lying to ourselves. Since I’ve been registered to vote, I’ve also witnessed the following:

• Republicans violating a “Read my, lips no new taxes” pledge to pass one of the largest tax increases in American history.
• Republicans campaigning on no nation-building, only to then see their administration undone by nation-building.
• Republicans vowing to suspend free-market principles to save the free market, via the biggest corporate welfare bailout in history.
• Republicans doubling the amount of government funding Planned Parenthood has received the past 20 years.

Turns out, we’re every bit the suckers the GOP are liars. This repeal Obamacare lie, albeit the most devastating, is really just the next descent in that nihilistic trend line. What we call a betrayal, Republicans call throwing another shrimp on the barbie.

But don’t just take my word for it. Former GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor recently admitted Republican leaders knew they were lying to us this entire time. Yet they did it anyway, because “if you’ve got that (voter) anger working for you, you’re gonna let it be.”

Allow me translate: “Lying to conservatives gets us what we want, and since they never hold us accountable ‘because the Democrats,’ we can do whatever we darned well please and get away with it. We can use these fools like Bubba used the White House intern pool, and they’ll come back for more as long as we promise to ‘save America’ or some other hokey slogan.

“Because for every Cantor that loses a primary, 99 percent of our liars won’t. In fact, they’ll get elevated to leadership, or just quit and take an even more lucrative job on K Street.”

And he’s right.

Thus, the real difference between the two parties will continue to be that the Democrats inspire their base to get what they want, while Republicans conspire against their base to get what they want. And since the Democrats are supposedly so bad, we’ll continue to be mad as hell but keep on taking it.

To the point that we’ll even end up implementing the policies we claimed to oppose.

Now that we know they’re liars, it’s time to find out if we’ll continue lying to ourselves.

Editor's note: The article's image has been changed to better reflect the content of the piece.