During last night’s North Carolina Senate Debate, incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan responded to criticism over her obliterated ‘keep your plan‘ Obamacare pledge by claiming she didn’t hear about cancellations until “last fall:”

Step one: Blame insurers, who were forced to cancel plans that failed to comply with Obamacare, the law for which Kay Hagan furnished the deciding vote. Step two: Claim that those millions of cancellation letters fell from the sky, as if no one had predicted them. Step three: Try to claim credit for a bill that never became law because Harry Reid wouldn’t even permit a vote on it. (Fun fact: Hagan has never been a primary sponsor on any piece of legislation that went on to become law). Instead, betrayed consumers had to rely on a frantic executive rule change that was rejected by a number of state insurance commissioners because the die had already been cast.  But here is a short, devastating passage from an October 2013 CNN story that exposes Hagan’s ‘I didn’t realize’ deception:

Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out. In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it…On a party line vote, Democrats killed the resolution, which could come back to haunt vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year. Senate Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich – all of whom voted against stopping the rule from going into effect and have since supported delaying parts of Obamacare.

Hagan didn’t just vote for the provision that triggered mass cancellations; when Republicans offered a resolution to spare consumers from that rule’s consequences, Hagan voted in lock step with her fellow Democrats to bury it.  She was warned explicitly about this issue at the time and chose to side with Barack Obama and Harry Reid against North Carolinians.  (Hagan votes with Obama 96 percent of the time).  And now, she’s trying to cover her ass by shamelessly lying about her actions, just as she shamelessly and repeatedly lied to citizens by telling them they’d be able to retain their preferred health coverage under Obamacare.  Republican nominee Thom Tillis needs to hold Hagan’s feet to the fire on this bogus excuse.  The CNN story excerpted above is a smoking gun.  While we’re on the subject of shameless Obamacare-related lies and smoking guns, check out this story in today’s Denver Post:

Republican operatives believe they have found a smoking gun against Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, who said during a 2008 debate he was against a “government-sponsored” solution for health care. The then-congressman, who was running for an open seat in the U.S. Senate, echoed arguments made by conservatives. “I’m not for a government-sponsored solution,” Udall said. “I’m for enhancing and improving the employer-based system that we have.” In a debate overshadowed by other issues — rising energy prices and the war on terror — Udall’s answer that July barely created a ripple. But in the context of Sen. Udall’s vote for the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and his tough re-election bid against Republican Congressman Cory Gardner in November, the statement takes on new meaning…”Mark Udall was elected on a lie,” Gardner said. “Mark Udall promised he would not support a government-sponsored solution and he broke that promise and voted for Obamacare.” Udall’s campaign says if Republicans believe they have found a smoking gun, they’re simply shooting themselves in the foot because Obamacare is not government-run health care. “They are grasping at straws,” Udall spokeswoman Kristin Lynch said.

Um, Udall told voters he would oppose government-sponsored healthcare solutions, and Obamacare clearly fits that bill.  Team Udall can parse whether or not the new law is technically tantamount to government-run healthcare (it’s undeniably an unprecedented federal intrusion into the healthcare markets, with the government micromanaging the “private” market like never before, and requiring every citizen to buy a product), but that misdirection won’t change the fact that he vowed not to support a government-sponsored regime.  During the Obamacare debate, Udall endorsed a so-called “public option,” an even more explicit form of government-sponsored healthcare. Oops.  His 2008 answer also committed to “enhancing and improving” the employer-based system.  How’s that working out?  The Obama administration’s internal projections anticipated that 93 million Americans would be displaced from their existing coverage under Obamacare, with a key architect of the law bragging that the employer-based system is being destroyed:

“Analysts predict [Obamacare] will be the end of employer-provided insurance, with former Obama adviser Zeke Emanuel writing that 80 percent of such plans will disappear within ten years.”

Emanuel insists that the implosion of the employer-based system will be “better for people.” In fairness, some conservative policy wonks have been seeking to transition away from the employer-based system for some time, in order to make health coverage portable and enhance cost-controlling competition — but none of that nuance was anywhere to be found in Democrats’ Obamacare sales pitch. The public was assured over and over again by people like Hagan and Udall that they could keep their plans. Period.  That promise has been, and will continue to be, exposed as absolutely false.  Polling indicates that roughly twice as many Americans say they’ve been personally hurt by Obamacare than helped, with most people responding that they haven’t been affected. Let’s see how the numbers on that last category move as employer-provided plans start to vanish.