Elijah Cummings: I spent a year ramming ObamaCare down your throat, and Gruber is screwing it all up!

As you know, the hearings involving Jonathan "you're a bunch of idiots" Gruber have begun. After an opening statement where Gruber did his best to make it sound as if he had little or nothing to do with the ObamaCare debacle, we were treated to a trademark Elijah Cummings diatribe. In his remarks, the ethically-challenged Maryland Democrat repeatedly blasted Gruber's "stupid" comments, but his reasons are the real story...

“As far as I can tell, we are here today to beat up on Jonathan Gruber for stupid - I mean absolutely stupid - comments he made over the past few years. ...And then grill and grill administrator Tavenner about what appears to be an inadvertent mistake in reporting ACA enrollment numbers. This may be good political theater, but it will not help a single American get health insurance. It will not help a single person get well. It will not help a single person get the care that they need."

Obviously, Cummings is in standard "pitbull" mode. There's no way Democrats can defend Gruber, so the plan is to separate the man who told the truth about the passage of the ACA from the bill itself. In other words, their going to defend the law tooth and nail, while simultaneously attacking the man they paid to help create it. Cummings went on to say:

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“Let me be clear: I am extremely frustrated with Dr. Gruber’s statements. They were irresponsibly, incredibly disrespectful, and did not reflect reality. ...And they were indeed insulting. I was in Congress when this law was debated, and Dr. Gruber does not speak for me, or the chairman of the other committees who worked tirelessly on this bill. We debated this legislation for nearly a year before it was finally passed and signed by the president. We held 79 hearings and markups in the House of Representatives alone. Never once did I believe or did anyone suggest that we were somehow hiding our goals from the American people.”

This bit, of course, is patently ridiculous. There was no substantive debate of any kind. If Cummings wants "political theater" he should check the tape. Democrats took the my-way-or-the-highway approach and, as Jonathan Gruber admitted, passed the bill with the help of lies, trickery, and a distracted electorate. Furthermore, virtually everyone who was paying attention to the process accused Democrats of hiding their goals. Heck, even Harry Reid and Barney Frank admitted that the goal was never ObamaCare - it was always single payer. So, why is Cummings so angry at Gruber? After all, he got the law he wanted and his party got a "step" on the single payer pathway. Other than the fact that the White House has probably told Cummings that he's supposed to be angry, why is he so furious? Well, he tells us:

"Worst of all, Dr. Gruber’s statements gave Republicans a public relations gift in their relentless political campaign to tear down the ACA and eliminate healthcare for millions of Americans!”

And there it is. Gruber made Democrats "look bad." That's the worst thing. It's not that their signature law was built on a foundation of deceit. It's not that the man they'd been citing as their top MIT expert had been instrumental in ramming a now-proven failure down the throats of every American citizen. It's not even that he thinks voters are idiots. It's all about optics. Cummings and Co. spent a year forcing a deeply unpopular law upon the populace. The majority opposed it then, and the majority opposes it today. In fact, it's only gotten worse since its partial implementation has proven it to be an abject failure. Now, as their law continues to crumble, Gruber has piped up and admitted the truth surrounding its creation. We can't have that, can we?