The following monologue wsa taken directly from Rush Limbaugh's website, and I think it is as close to a prize-winning piece of right-wing demagoguery as anything that has been uttered over the past few months:
I'm thinking about our call from Rebecca. You know, there's a common theme, all of these people who are calling get upset about insurance agencies and insurance companies, and they keep talking about The Middleman. We've gotta get rid of The Middleman, and that's what Obama says -- and that's what is common theme among communists and socialists: "Take out The Middleman and let's have you deal directly with us in the government," and when I hear Rebecca jumping all over the insurance companies, I think, "Okay, that part of Obama's plan is working on some Americans." He's demonized the doctors, saying, "The doctors cut off your foot when they don't have to get 30 or 40 grand." Of course no doctor gets 30 or 40 grand for cutting off a foot. "They take out kids' tonsils unnecessarily just to line his pockets." He's demonizing everybody. The Democrat Party enemies list is the private sector. From Walmart, Big Retail, to Big Oil, to Big Pharmaceutical, to now Big Insurance. Look at the Democrat Party's enemy list. They're trying to demonize individuals, too, like me but they're demonizing all of these industries and now all these middlemen. "The private sector middlemen, they are the problem! We need to get rid of the private sector middlemen and just open the door so we can deal directly with our beloved benevolent government," which, of course, is only here to help us.
Let us do some dissection, shall we?
I'm thinking about our call from Rebecca. You know, there's a common theme, all of these people who are calling get upset about insurance agencies and insurance companies, and they keep talking about The Middleman. We've gotta get rid of The Middleman...
Granted, I did not find any transcript with Rebecca's call, but I think it is fair to assume that she was probably giving the relatively common argument that government-run health insurance would "cut out the middleman" between patients and doctors. As this line of thinking (rather logically) goes, insurance companies frequently fail to provide any meaningful services to the patients they claim to represent, and instead simply figure out ways of bilking both doctor and patient out of vast sums of cash in order for necessary medical procedures to be performed. Of course, more noteworthy than my supposition of what Rebecca said is the fact that I am forced to suppose anything in the first place; a man with more interest in intellectual integrity would have at the very least summarized Rebecca's argument to his audience (so that she could have the benefit of having presented her side on the issue) before simply disparaging it. Anyway...
That's what Obama says -- and that's what is common theme among communists and socialists...
When I was a young child, I used to say that I hated trivial things, such as getting a peanut butter sandwich for lunch (I hate peanut butter sandwiches) or having to wait on line before being seated at a ride. Eventually my juvenile hyperbole sufficiently aggravated my mother, who pulled me aside and politely explained that extreme words like "hate" had a very specific meaning, and that I should refrain from using them unless I understand not only what they mean, but how they specifically apply to a given situation. This particular insight is hardly unique to my mother, but apparently has been lost on the paragon of conservative thoughtfulness that is Rushbo; anything which he dislikes or wishes to instantly discredit he classifies as "communist" and "socialist". Does he even understand what those words mean? Can he draw a specific parallel between them and this situation? As someone who has made a point of studying various political philosophies throughout Western history, I can safely say that I never recall the theme of "needing to cut out the middleman" being used by them. Rush Limbaugh either doesn't actually understand socialism and communism, and thus fails to realize that his statement is as profoundly absurd as it is factually wanting, or he does understand them and intentionally plays fast and loose with his facts. Either way, it doesn't matter, because in the minds of his audience the mere pretense of authoritative knowledge on a subject like socialism and communism is enough to convince them that the expertise is actually present. None of them will ever bother looking it up to see whether Limbaugh was right or talking out of his rather prodigious hindquarters, and as such, he will have scored another dishonest win in his one-sided debate against Rachel.
... when I hear Rebecca jumping all over the insurance companies, I think, "Okay, that part of Obama's plan is working on some Americans."
Between 2001 and 2007, The Harris Poll conducted a comprehensive survey that asked Americans whether they felt the industries that provided major goods and services in America were doing a good job. Twenty-one different businesses were included in the survey, with Americans consistently giving the highest marks to supermarkets and Internet search engines and the lowest scores to oil and tobacco companies. Ranking nineteenth out of twenty-one in overall satisfaction, however, were managed care companies such as HMOs (29% approved in 2001, 30% in 2003, 41% in 2006, 37% in 2007), and just slightly above them (eighteenth out of twenty-one) were health insurance companies (38% approved in 2001, 40% in 2003, 46% in 2006, and 39% in 2007). Limbaugh isn't being fair to the insurance companies' unfailing ability to screw up their own public image without any assistance from President Obama.
He's demonized the doctors, saying, "The doctors cut off your foot when they don't have to get 30 or 40 grand." Of course no doctor gets 30 or 40 grand for cutting off a foot. "They take out kids' tonsils unnecessarily just to line his pockets." He's demonizing everybody.
The context of the speech in which Obama referred to these instances was, not surprisingly, ignored by Limbaugh. Here President Obama was discussing the very real problem of doctors receiving greater financial compensation for performing invasive medical procedures than for offering preventative care (to disagree with that notion would be to argue that surgeries are not notoriously more expensive than being given a pamphlet on how to improve your diet). As a true blue capitalist, Rush Limbaugh is no doubt familiar with the concept of incentivization - in an economic system based on the principle of free enterprise, goods and services will be proffered based on what their distributors believe will earn them the highest possible profit. If our medical care system made it so that doctors would receive money on the basis of how effectively they either prevented or treated illnesses (such as Obama was hypothetically proposing in his speech), it would encourage doctors to only take the patient's health into consideration when making decisions. Because our system instead offers doctors greater financial rewards for performing intensive procedures, physicians are faced with a dilemma that - regardless of how many choose the ethical path over the profitable one - quite clearly shouldn't exist in the first place. Of course, a stalwart defender of the unfettered marketplace like Rush Limbaugh was no doubt aware of all this already.
The Democrat Party enemies list is the private sector. From Walmart, Big Retail, to Big Oil, to Big Pharmaceutical, to now Big Insurance. Look at the Democrat Party's enemy list. They're trying to demonize individuals, too, like me but they're demonizing all of these industries and now all these middlemen. "The private sector middlemen, they are the problem! We need to get rid of the private sector middlemen and just open the door so we can deal directly with our beloved benevolent government," which, of course, is only here to help us.
This is as fine a piece of sophistry as I have ever encoutered. In one fell swoop, Rush Limbaugh has managed to turn billion-dollar corporations - the very same ones with hundreds of lobbyists on Capitol Hill constantly funneling thousands of dollars into the campaigns of congressmen (and women) from both major parties in order to have legislation passed in accordance with their interests - into powerless victims at the hands of sinister Democrats (and presumably ones with whom his poor, lower-middle class, and middle class listeners should sympathize). From this he then segues in interpreting the argument of his female caller (whose own words, once again, are never used to provide a balanced perspective on her position) as one of blind love of big government, even though of course the individuals who propose "cutting out the middle man" invariably do so because they want NO ONE standing between them and their doctor - the government, as such arguments go, would merely prevent insurance companies from standing in the way, rather than serve as a middle man or replacement to doctors in their own right. Finally, and most importantly, Limbaugh has managed, despite the waves of verbiage with which he has deluged his audience, to completely avoid actually addressing the claim poor Rebecca made in the first place. Instead he committed the classic "straw man" fallacy - instead of attempting to rebut whatever it was that Rebecca actually he said, he intentionally misrepresented it as being a completely different argument, so that by tearing down the much weaker assertion he has now falsely attributed to his hapless caller he can give the appearance of having refuted the (presumably stronger) claim she actually made.
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