ThinkProgress catches Sen. Orrin Hatch doing an amusing flip flop. In response to President Obama’s new spending proposal, which would include $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and other social programs in exchange for a tax increase on the top 2%, Hatch calls this a “classic bait and switch” because “I don’t recall him asking for any of that during the presidential campaign.” Here’s the video:
But here’s the punchline. Those same proposals were in a the plan put out by the Obama campaign a couple weeks before the election. And Hatch knew that, because he responded to it at the time and called it nothing but a rehash of old ideas:
Much of President Obama’s current proposal appeared in his 20-page plan, released in October. Hatch apparently missed these explicit mentions of tax cuts for the middle class (but not the wealthiest Americans), small business tax breaks to stimulate the economy, and entitlement savings — then and now. In a Politco op/ed following the plan’s original release, Hatch mocked it as a “glossy 20-page brochure” but not a “plan,” and dismissed it as “nothing but a rehash of the same failed ideas of the past four years.”
Okay Orrin, pick an argument. We’ll wait.
18 comments
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Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
December 4, 2012 at 2:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But you see it was a bait and switch because this plan was already mooted, so nobody could possibly have foreseen it returning after the election, since everybody already knows everything Obma ever says is a lie. Therefore this already-explained plan came straight out of left field and is political grandstanding and rule by tyranny.
Or something.
Dennis N
December 4, 2012 at 2:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How is something “failed” if was never tried because you blocked all attempts to try it?
How is something “successful” like supply side economics when it was tried for 30 years and shown to not work?
I don’t think all the snarky comments on the internet could equal the prescience of Orwell.
d.c.wilson
December 4, 2012 at 2:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He doesn’t remember Obama campaigning on this economic plan? Was he in coma for the past year?
Larry
December 4, 2012 at 3:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Republicans are liars.
Hatch is a republican.
Ergo, Hatch is a liar.
roggg
December 4, 2012 at 3:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tax cuts for the middle class, and the wealthiest paying their fair share was never mentioned in any campaign material. Wait, what?
John Hinkle
December 4, 2012 at 3:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How is that going to work? Isn’t the over 65 population growing?
Or is this a ploy to get all the House republicans to vote for it and then get hammered in their next election?
Modusoperandi
December 4, 2012 at 3:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Everything Obama does is wrong.”
iknklast
December 4, 2012 at 4:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The real argument? “Oh my God, there’s a black man in the White House!” Can’t say that; not nice. So they pretend they’re saying something else.
ArtK
December 4, 2012 at 4:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know what your problem is. Hatch is very consistent: anything Obama does is bad. It’s very simple.
busterggi
December 4, 2012 at 4:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You can lead Orrin Hatch to water but you can’t make him think.
iangould
December 4, 2012 at 4:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In faitness to the Senator just because he attacked Obama’s economix plan doesn’t mean he’d bothered to read it or knew what was in it.
It was, after all, Obama’s economic plan.
Dr X
December 4, 2012 at 5:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And even if Obama had changed his offer, how the f is the compromise Republicans claim they want supposed to occur without changes in offers?
The Republican Party has been effectively rendered a Twilight Zone episode with the Tea people in the role of Anthony Fremont.
John Hinkle
December 4, 2012 at 5:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dr . X:
I know this question is rhetorical, but I’ll answer it anyway. It has to do with the definition of compromise as found in Webster’s New World Dictionary for When a Black Man Is President.
compromise: v. to accept a republican offer with no modifications or amendments.
Dr X
December 4, 2012 at 5:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
John Hinkle,
Uh oh. You’ve spoken the forbidden words. Anthony is going to turn you into a jack-in-the-box.
Ichthyic
December 4, 2012 at 10:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
wait, you mean Hatch actually came OUT of the coma he’s been in for 15 years?
Ichthyic
December 4, 2012 at 10:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
frankly, if it is, the current GoP majority is actually dumb enough to fall for it.
I really would like to see what Obama would do if he had super majorities on his side in both houses of congress.
Ichthyic
December 4, 2012 at 11:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Orrin Hatch: Pick a Horse and Ride It
for some reason, now all I can think of when i see that is this.
mjmiller
December 5, 2012 at 10:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Why is it whenever a republican open his or her mouth all I hear is this from the movie Strange Brew:
Claude Elsinore: And I’d like to point out that these tapes have not been faked, or altered in any way. In fact they have time coding, which is very hard to fake.
The Judge: For the benefit of the court would you please explain “time coding.”
Claude Elsinore: Well, uh… just because I don’t know what it is, it doesn’t mean I’m lying.