This isn't Hitler stuff to tell the truth. It puts one more in mind of an elite class of Chicagoans: the kind once widely known for putting the squeeze on merchants who had chosen a different supplier and now needed a little persuasion -- so's the guys could finally see the light, right? Labor unions, too, back in their heyday, were good at a little friendly coercion, slyly demonstrating to bosses the virtues of "cooperation."
The use of political muscle certainly isn't without precedent. It's just, in the present context, that of an administration that campaigned on bringing us together … it's just kind of sleazy and distasteful, not least on account of the stakes involved in health care. Bad enough the White House never announced, and certainly never held, a national conversation on health care. Worse is the ongoing attempt to have Congress cram down Americans' throats a plan most Americans don't even want, if polls are to be believed.
Trying to stifle debate -- to ridicule or intimidate your opponents isn't smart politics. It's stupid politics. Voters resent it. All the more they will resent it, if opening at Christmas the nice, shiny present from Congress, they dislike its look and smell. They might decide to throw it back at the giver.
Dishonesty is a ghastly, if painfully familiar, human trait -- exclusive neither to fuehrers, nor emperors, nor elected presidents and their well-paid advisers. The funny thing is, it doesn't even work for long. And when it stops working, Katie, bar the door!