Mike Allen reports that the White House has posted a three-minute video punching back at an old clip of President Obama that was featured on the Drudge Report with the headline: “Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will ‘Eliminate’ Private Insurance.” The video features White House Office of Health Reform communications director Linda Douglass characterizing the video linked on Drudge as “disinformation.”
To rebut the charge made in the Drudge headline, Douglass plays clips of Obama making his patented Obamacare guarantees. These guarantees are not supported by reference to any of the Obamacare bills pending in Congress. They are simply the endlessly reiterated, poll-tested talking points that Obama regurgitates to tell a national audience what he thinks it wants to hear. The point of the Drudge video is that Obama’s current sales pitch is belied by deeply held views expressed in lesser-known past statements. If this is the best the White House can do to rebut the Drudge-linked video, viewers should be able to draw the appropriate inferences.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has more. A reader has also copied us on a message to Mike Allen commenting on his story:
The White House didn’t even substantively argue the point — nothing they say denies that Obama made these statements. You just sucked up some Kool-Aid and pushed out this story affirming Obama’s claim of “smear” based on … what? That the tape quoted Obama?
The reader adds a substantive criticism of Allen’s article on Obama’s non-response to the Drudge video, referring to Rep. Barney Frank’s recent comment supporting Obama’s statement to the SEIU in 2007 that the public option would lead to a single payer government health care system.
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