That's a straw man argument. Malkin simply didn't equate a "required list of vaccines" to ObamaCare. Heck, the word ObamaCare is not even in the column.
What Malkin does say--and most of her critics on this thread fail to directly refute--is that the Gardasil episode includes behavior which is "Obama-like". As Malkin puts it, there is evidence of "every worst habit of the Obama administration." Malkin then goes on to offer specific, fact-based reasons for her claim.
Malkin's contention is that the Gardasil episode displays the following habits of the Perry administration: (1)trampled on the deliberative process, (2) engaged in "human shield demagoguery", and (3) cronyism. Malkin's critics would do well to actually respond to these specific claims, instead of knocking down a straw man argument that isn't made by Malkin.
I've never been a huge fan of Malkin, because she can get carried away with moments of self-righteous hyperbole which distract or undermine her positions. But here Malkin has written what I believe will come to be considered a seminal piece of political criticism, one that raises substantive issues that cannot simply be dismissed as hyperbole and stands to haunt Perry for the rest of the campaign.
Yes, and I said, and say again, that is is absurd to compare adding a vaccine to the list of required vaccines to Obama and the democrats implementing Obamacare.
Every executive decision looks like every other executive decision, if you speak broadly enough. But Obamacare was passed by legislators. It was debated in congress for months. It was out in the open, and we all knew how bad it was, and the democrats passed it anyway, not for cronyism, but because they had an ideological belief in a single-payer government-run health system and this was how they were getting there.
I don’t accept Malkin’s hypothesis that Perry trampled on the deliberative process (didn’t the legislature pass the vaccine law that sets up mandatory vaccines for school, and give the authority to put specific vaccines on or off the list to an executive department?), “human shield demagogery” (that sounds clever but is stupid, “for the children” isn’t “human shield” — human shield is “I’m holding up consideration of this law that will really help people until you pass my rediculous bill into law”), and cronyism (We can go after ANY politician, democrat or republican, for taking interest in laws that affect the people who support them with donations).
But taking them as fact, they have nothing to do with Obamacare (the word you used in YOUR comment), nor or they Obama-like relative to Obamacare.
Obamacare was an abuse of the legislative process, not a trampling of the deliberative process. It was defended as saving the country money, of reforming our medical system, it lowered the deficit, it gave everybody health insurance, and to help people who pay for insurance to pay less because it removed the burden of the uninsured (These were all false, but THOSE were the selling points, not some “human shield” argument that we had to pass it in order to pass something necessary).
And it was not about Obama paying back his supporters (he did a LOT of that of course). It was about pushing a left-wing ideology on the country, taking over the health care system, making us more socialist. There were things put in the bill that supporters wanted, but that was to buy votes, not because the bill was written to do so.
People who we are trying to convince to repeal Obamacare will be confused by an argument that Perry is as bad as Obama because he added a vaccine to a required list. When they see the absurdity of making a big deal about it, they will wonder if the same people are making too big a deal about Obamacare.
Everybody here agrees that Romney is a real problem, because he implemented and defended an Obamacare-like program in Mass. So we say RomneyCare is like Obamacare, and that ROmney has an Obamacare problem, and we question how Romney will campaign against Obama on the issue because Obama can praise ROmney for his own version of Obamacare.
That’s what an “Obamacare problem looks like, and Romneycare was legislation that looks “Obama-like”. I don’t see a teneble argument that Obama will be able to point to Perry’s adding Gardicil to the school vaccine list and saying “See, Perry supports Obamacare”. They are entirely different things, and were arrived at in entirely different manner and for entirely DIFFERENT reasons.
No, there is no comparison between adding a vaccine and Obamacare, and there is no comparison between HOW Perry added a vaccine, and how Obama and the democrats enacted Obamacare.
It’s just another way for people who oppose Perry to reframe the Gardicil debate by tying it to something all conservatives and a majority of americans loathe.