During Thursday evening's edition of The Colbert Report, Comedy Central's faux conservative turned his attention to the latest problems confronting the Affordable Care Act, including comments made by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber that ObamaCare only passed due to a “lack of transparency” and “the stupidity of the American voter.”
Of course, Stephen Colbert was only joking when he said that “Professor Gruber just delivered a death blow to ObamaCare,” which the host claimed he never liked because it “put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor,” and “the next thing you know, the doctor and the bureaucrat are hanging out all the time. … Thanks, Obama.”
“If you watch this show,” the comedian said to open the segment, you know “I'm always the first to admit when I'm wrong. And once again, I am right.”
“This time, it's about ObamaCare,” he stated. “Luckily, the Republicans are in power now, and they're going to do something about it by undoing something about it and put forth their own ideas.”
After showing a series of clips featuring conservatives calling for change in parts of the Affordable Care Act, Colbert stated:
Yes, after more than 50 votes against ObamaCare, the Republican majority is now promising to fix the law, just like when you try to murder someone 50 times and it doesn't work, so you buy them a gym membership.
And they have a great starting point for health-care reform reform: restoring the 40-hour work week ... as God intended when he clocked out at 5 whether or not the oceans were done. That's why flounders look so weird.
“But Congress might not have to fix this wreck,” Colbert noted, “because it might have wrecked itself.”
The host then showed a series of clips featuring Gruber, who said: “If we made it explicit that the healthy will pay and the sick people will get money, it would not have passed.”
The professor also stated that ObamaCare was intentionally written in a “tortured way to hide the taxes that would have killed the bill.”
“Ah-ha! I knew it!” Colbert declared. “ObamaCare is funded by taxes, unlike every other part of the federal government. I mean, everybody knows the F35 Fighter Jet Program is paid for with candy sales.”
“And just listen to why they thought they could get away with this:”
Lack of transparency was a huge political advantage, and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to get this passed.
“The stupidity of the American voter,” Colbert repeated before commenting that “Professor Gruber just delivered a death blow to ObamaCare. And I'm not the only one out there who's offended. Just ask South Carolina Congressman and a guy who puts his wig on backwards, Trey Gowdy.”
While a guest on The Kelly File, Gowdy responded to Gruber's comments by stating: “I would say this to the professor: If you want to see how stupid our fellow citizens are, take a look at last Tuesday night,” the GOP official stated.
“Yes, if you want to see how stupid Americans are, just look at who they elected last Tuesday,” Colbert asserted with a montage of “smart guys” featuring Florida governor Rick Scott, Tennessee senator Mitch McConnell and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker beside him.
“Of course, I don't have to tell you Democrats are manipulative elitists,” the host noted. “Fox will do it for me.”
In a clip from Fox News Channel's Hannity program, the conservative host declared:
The entire process of getting this passed was all predicated on manipulating and lying to the American people because they knew they couldn't get it passed any other way.
“Yes,” Colbert added, “contemptuous Democrats looked down on the American people from their ivory towers and thought, ‘What a pathetic horde of dullards; let’s give them health care.’”
He continued: “Republicans respected the voters' intelligence by telling them the death panels would grind up your grandma to make glue.”
“And Professor Numbnuts here wasn't even the worst thing to happen to ObamaCare this week,” the comedian continued, “because on Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear yet another legal challenge that could kill the law.”
“It's like the old saying: The wheels of justice grind slowly, but eventually, they'll run over sick people,” he noted.
After all this time pretending to be a conservative, it will be interesting to see how much of that fake persona will follow Colbert when he becomes the host of Late Night on CBS after David Letterman retires in 2015.
