Politics & Power Quote by Rush Limbaugh

"Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head, John Conyers, says he doesn't understand it. It'll be passed by Congress that has not read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?"

Rush Limbaugh, Entertainer

About this Quote

The line is engineered like a domino run: each clause knocks down the credibility of the next institution until the reader is left not with a policy critique, but with a mood - cynical inevitability. Limbaugh isn’t arguing details of health care. He’s staging a distrust cascade, where the plan’s alleged authors and stewards are painted as personally compromised, intellectually unfit, or financially corrupt. The closer he gets to the punchline, the less the “plan” matters and the more the audience is invited to sneer at the people.

The subtext is pure populist theater: elites don’t just govern badly; they govern illegitimately. Notice the tactic of substitution. “Committee” becomes “John Conyers doesn’t understand it.” “Legislation” becomes “Congress hasn’t read it.” Administrative competence is reduced to character evidence: a smoking president can’t sign health reform, an obese Surgeon General can’t oversee public health, a tax-blemished Treasury chief can’t fund anything. Whether those charges are fair is secondary to how effectively they turn complex governance into a morality play.

Context matters: this comes from the high-decibel backlash era around the Affordable Care Act, when “read the bill” and “backroom deals” were ubiquitous on the right, and economic anxiety after the 2008 crisis made “nearly broke” feel like common sense. The closing “What could possibly go wrong?” is the clincher - a sarcastic wink that converts outrage into camaraderie, letting the audience feel like they’ve spotted the scam before it happens.

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Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh (born January 12, 1951) is a Entertainer from USA.

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