Further to my recent posts on the candidacy of GOP reptile-in-chief, Rudy Giuliani, may I draw your attention to this article by economist Paul Krugman. Krugman catches Giuliani as he peddles some unsubstantiated “facts” about “socialized medicine” (which, unsurprisingly when you consider Giuliani’s penchant for bullshit, are untrue).
And the moneyist of the money quotes?
At one level, what Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney are doing here is engaging in time-honored scare tactics. For generations, conservatives have denounced every attempt to ensure that Americans receive needed health care, from Medicare to S-chip, as “socialized medicine.â€
Part of the strategy has always involved claiming that health reform is suspect because it’s un-American, and exaggerating health care problems in other countries — usually on the basis of unsubstantiated anecdotes or fraudulent statistics. Opponents of reform also make a practice of lumping all forms of government intervention together, pretending that having the government pay some health care bills is just the same as having the government take over the whole health care system.
But here’s what I don’t understand: Why isn’t Mr. Giuliani’s behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?