Trump's Big CON: His Supporters Love the CON, CONt. (AKA Broken Campaign Promises, Health Care Edition)

UPDATE:  "A large segment of Republican voters should try turning off Fox News and allowing reality to permeate the shell they’ve constructed to keep out ideas that interfere with their prejudices and abject ignorance. Unfair? Take a look at the latest poll to suggest that Trump voters like their cult hero feel compelled to label inconvenient facts “fake news.' .  .

[As reported on Morning Consult:] . .

Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American, said in an email Tuesday that Trump has 'perfected the technique of the Big Lie' — which, as he wrote in an op-ed last fall, is to 'repeat a lie loudly, over and over until people come to believe it.'

'These results show that again that like ‘Birtherism,’ which launched Trump’s political career, the Big Lie continues to work, at least among those who want to believe it,' noted Lichtman, a professor who won professional acclaim last year after correctly predicting Trump’s victory. . .

I’m sure all this makes the Trump staff and surrogates laugh uproariously as they admire their handiwork in bamboozling the angry mob. But they and the network of right-wing enablers have done real damage to our society and politics, making differences impossible to bridge and reasoned debate nearly impossible. . .

And here’s where the executives at Fox News, the 'serious' conservative media, elected GOP officials and even self-identified conservative pundits need to be held to account. They know much of the rubric of the Trump cult is absolutely false, yet they repeat, propagate or just tolerate it. It’s a game in which the only rule is to beat 'liberal elites' or run a successful money-making operation where gullible donors can be fleeced with an appeal to stop perceived enemies (i.e., those who won’t drink the Kool-Aid).

Democracy presupposes a minimally informed, responsible adult electorate. Right now it is clear the GOP is dominated by fact-deniers and willfully ignorant folk. Whether they got that way because sleazy politicians conned them and Fox News lulled them into a stupor or whether spineless pols are simply filling a niche remains a matter of debate. But here’s the thing: The rest of the country should empathize with their economic plight and sense of alienation, but that does not mean we should coddle them in their ignorance nor defer to judgments based on fabrication. They feel 'disrespected' when fellow Americans point to reality? Trumpkins think elites are condescending when they call them 'low information' voters? (It should be non-information voters.) Sorry, economic hardship does not bestow moral authority to lie, invent facts, smear opponents, blame foreigners or support lawlessness. And for elected Republicans to defer to the ignorant, beguiled voters is an abdication of their role and oaths.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) bellowed at his colleagues to 'stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet.' Here’s a better idea: Stop deferring to a horde of know-nothings."

Read the Washington Post, The frightful state of the GOP.

"As Republicans struggle to figure out which spectacularly unpopular, viciously cruel, and perfunctorily considered version of their health care bill they want to become law, one former member of the House leadership has come out with an extraordinary admission about what a scam the whole project is. In an interview with Elaina Plott of Washingtonian magazine, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who was defeated in a primary in 2014 by a Tea Party extremist, explains that Republicans knew they were lying to their base about their ability to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they just couldn’t help themselves . . .

What’s truly remarkable isn’t that a bunch of cynical politicians thought they could ride their base voters’ anger into control of Congress by lying to them about what they could actually accomplish, it’s that their voters actually believed it. And then those voters got even angrier when it turned out that the president had the ability to veto bills passed by a Congress controlled by the other party. Who knew! So instead of looking for a presidential candidate who would treat them like adults, they elected Donald Trump, a man who would pander to their gullibility even more.

Which brings us to where we are today. Republicans couldn’t be bothered for seven years to actually think about what repealing and replacing the ACA might involve, or whether there would be tradeoffs and choices to make, or whether setting up a system that accorded with their conservative philosophy might not actually solve the problems of the health care system. They thought it would be enough to tell their voters to get mad, and worry later about what it would take to keep the promises they made.

So now they find themselves with a bill that nearly everyone hates. If it passes (in whatever form), it will be a disaster for the health care system, and will be a political disaster for them as well. But they’ve convinced themselves that the only thing worse politically would be to not pass anything, because that would incur the wrath of those same base voters. In other words, their current position is, “We know how catastrophic this bill would be. But we got here by lying to these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers for years, and if we don’t follow through, they’ll punish us.” They believe that their voters will say, 'Okay, so I lost my health coverage because of you, but you’ll get my vote again because you kept your promise.' . .

That was just one of the many lies they were told, and they ate it up. Now we’ll all have to pay the price."

Read the Washington Post, Trump and Republicans treat their voters like morons.

Read also Trump's Big CON: His Supporters Love the CON.