The administration uses a strange sort of pincer attack in pushing its agenda. On the one hand, for example, the Obama administration has offered nothing concrete in terms of actual health care legislation:
...“I called him,” said Stupak. “I called the president--had a discussion with the president. And I read exactly what you just said. And he said: ‘What it says is “under my plan”’—meaning the president’s plan. And I said: ‘With all due respect, sir, you do not have a plan. The only plan we have out is the House plan.’ So, I don’t know if it is a game of semantics or what.”This lack-of-concreteness has been used on several occasions by defenders of the President. When we talk about things we'd like not to see in any plan -- I've seen this tactic fielded on Afghanistan, too, where the President also has no plan -- we're told that any objections are 'lies about my plan' or 'chasing pink elephants' because the President has written no plan. So that's pincer one: you can't attack my plan, because there's nothing to attack.
Pincer two: ...and the time for debate is over.
So, you can't attack the plan because it doesn't exist yet. And we can't debate what the plan shouldn't include, because the time for debate is over. We must adopt my plan that doesn't exist right now!
It's almost clever, since it really does make it hard to debate the President on anything. Of course, the flaw in the plan is that someone else becomes the voice of your ideas.
UPDATE: Or possibly there just is no plan for anything at all.... (h/t InstaPundit.)
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