CT Blue

One of my favorite exchanges in literature appears in Alice in Wonderland. Humpty Dumpty tells Alice:

“When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

To which Alice-remember Alice?-, replies:

“The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

Bu the far wiser Mr. Dumpty sets her straight:

“The question is, which is to be master—that's all.”

The Republicans may just have had their heads handed to them but that doesn't stop them from proving their mastery over the poor, helpless words that they torture regularly. Turns out, for instance, that only a lying journalist could claim that the Republicans were ever trying to use extortion to repeal Obamacare. And it's not the word “extortion” that they choose to master, it's the word “repeal”.

According to Congresscritter Raúl Labrador (R-ID), Rep. Labrador says “it's 'absolutely false' that GOP sought Obamacare repeal. 'We have never asked for a full repeal of Obamacare…'

You might have thought otherwise, but that was undoubtedly before Labrador and his friends proved their mastery over the word "repeal”. The poor guy was helpless before them. A mere six letters and two forlorn syllables could never withstand the combined attack of the Republican Masters of Words. In this case, as Jed Lewison at Daily Kos explains, there is a crucial distinction that those of us who think like Alice could never have seen or manufactured:

So if you said Labrador and his fellow Republicans were demanding Obamacare repeal in this government shutdown, you're totally lying, because they weren't demanding Obamacare repeal, they were merely demanding the Obamacare be defunded until 2015 because they were united in support of “getting rid of Obamacare.”

And, as everybody knows, there's an enormous difference between “repealing Obamacare” and “getting rid of Obamacare.” So if you're one of the lying liars who is accusing Republicans of trying to use the government shutdown and threat of default as leverage to repeal Obamacare, you need to start telling the truth: They were simply trying to get rid of it.

Of course, the Republicans have an easier job than did Humpty. Back in his day there were lots of people who thought just like Alice. But in these modern times our media, at least, are far more flexible. After all, what appears to a neutral observer as a “cut” to a program can be perceived by our press as merely a “change”. It couldn't be that hard for them to go along with seeing a crucial distinction between getting rid of a law and repealing it.

One might ask why the Republicans need to make work for the staff of the OED. It’s really quite simple. If they weren’t trying to repeal Obamacare, then they didn’t just get their clocks cleaned. And, at the risk of summoning the shade of Lewis Carroll again, if they say it three times it is true.