“Congress was “Exposing deceit as [Jonathan Gruber] ‘humbly’ begs our pardon,” John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post. Podhoretz compares Gruber to Lee Strasberg’s Hyman Roth character in the Godfather II, the powerful rival mafioso who insisted to law enforcement that he was merely “a retired investor on a pension,” before noting:
Even [Gruber’s] his invocation of a disclosure form was deceptive, because it turns out that form was hilariously incomplete (featuring only $100,000 of the many millions he has apparently received).
Gruber decided to play the fool he clearly is not — and to draw the fire of congressional Republicans and Democrats — because he clearly understands the damage his videotaped remarks do to the larger project of a government-led health-care system.
That is, the project which has not only become the mission of his life, but also a path to multimillionaire wealth most policy wonks can only dream of.
“We’re gonna be bigger than US Steel,” Hyman Roth says in “Godfather II” about his effort to take over Cuba in the 1950s.
Jonathan Gruber’s effort to help with the takeover of one-sixth of the US economy won’t end in revolution, as Hyman Roth’s does. It will survive or die based on the truth of his deepest wish, notwithstanding his meretricious apology yesterday: that the American voter is just as stupid and gullible as he thinks.
As Iowahawk tweeted last month, “Dear Tea Party people: say what you want about Gruber, but it wasn’t you he was calling stupid.”
Earlier in his column, Podhoretz wrote:
“You have to answer the question,” he was reminded more than once by congressional interlocutors whose interchanges with him ranged from amused disbelief (the committee chairman, Darrell Issa, pictured) to barely concealed outrage (Rep. Trey Gowdy).
As with his grillings of the equally smug IRS bureaucrat John Koskinen, Gowdy’s outrage was visible for all to see will dressing down Gruber:
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It’s great theater, and nobody deserves to be on the receiving end of a Lee Ermey-style dressing down than those two. But as with Gowdy and Koskinen, all that rage is fun to watch, but it matters little — and could ultimately backfire for the GOP — if nothing substantive happens. Obama’s fellow socialists already likely believe they can get away with murder if all they have to do is endure a few hours of grilling from the spittle-flecked but ultimately supine school principal in return.
Just ask Barry himself.
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