Obama: fundamental economic illiteracy or a deeply troubling readiness to mislead?

That's always been the question, hasn't it?  Are Obama and his fellow travelers, to reduce it down, stupid or evil?

Good article at NRO by Charles Cooke: Obamacare Snake Oil. As broken promises pile up — “Lower rates for all!” — the Left rolls out new sales pitches.

You should, of course, read the whole thing.  Excerpts:

Don’t look now, but as Obamacare’s critics are focusing incessantly on the abortive rollout of the law’s health-care exchanges, the Left is moving the goalposts in the broader debate — and rather spectacularly, too.

To recap, then: Before, during, and after passage, Americans were promised that Obamacare was going to lower premiums for “everyone” (the goal of merely maintaining premiums being too modest); it was not going to interfere with anybody’s health care or health insurance if they already had it; and it was not going change anybody’s patient-doctor relationship. The message was unmistakable: All the government wanted to do was extend health insurance to people who didn’t have it. This wouldn’t affect you. No need to worry. Period. Move along.

What was not claimed was that Obamacare was necessary because health care is a “right,” as the president has recently taken to arguing; that redistribution was critical for “fairness”; or that some would win and some would lose but that, overall, it would be a solid compromise. Instead, unmistakable promises, easy enough to check in the age of the Internet, were repeatedly made by the architects and cheerleaders of reform.