It’s not exactly a chapter for a new edition of Profiles in Courage, but Michelle Nunn apparently hopes her strange straddle on ObamaCare will keep her in the running for the US Senate seat from Georgia. NBC’s Kasie Hunt asks Nunn whether she would have voted for ObamaCare had she been in the Senate in 2010. Nunn gets so flustered that she butchers the official legislative name of ObamaCare and turns “architect” into a verb to provide a non-answer (via America Rising PAC):
NBC’S KASIE HUNT: “Would you have voted for the Affordable Care Act?”
MICHELLE NUNN: “At the time the Affordable Health Care Act was passed, I was working for Points of Light. I wished that we had more people who had tried to architect a bipartisan legislation.”
HUNT: “So yes or no?”
NUNN: “So I think it’s impossible to look back retrospectively and say what would you have done if you were there?”
After months on the campaign trail, this is the best Nunn can do? It seems Nunn didn’t get the DNC memo that it’s totally cool to run on ObamaCare. Why not just offer a “yes” or “no”? If she wants to win in Georgia, it had better be the latter, and if she expects support from the national party, it’d better be the former. The fact that she’s not willing to set her feet in either option tells Georgia voters that the answer is “yes,” but that she doesn’t want to be held accountable for that view.
Needless to say, this didn’t impress the Morning Joe crew:
Chuck Todd was a little more explicit in his disgust:
MSNBC’s CHUCK TODD: “But I have to say I thought – boy, nothing screamed practiced politician like that answer Michelle Nunn gave on health care. It just doesn’t come across as credible. You know what’s at least more credible is saying well I supported it but I don’t like this, this, and this. At least there’s a little credibility when you give that answer. When you somehow say, well I was busy doing another job -”
BRZEZINSKI: “You can’t look back. Come on now.”
TODD: “I think that’s a terrible answer. I think she’s going to have to get a better answer.”
It is a terrible answer, and a straddle that tells far more about the candidate than either other answer would have provided. The claim that a politician running for the Senate in 2014 has not articulated answer for a position on ObamaCare has as much credibility as a promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” does now. It doesn’t say, “I want to architect more bipartisan solutions,” but “I will say anything to get elected.” Good luck with that message in the year of Bending The Cost Curve Ballistic.
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