Seth Bringman & ODP fail reading comprehension and logic

This story from DDN is revealing in so many ways:

On a day that brought President Barack Obama to Ohio to make a final appeal for congressional approval of his health care overhaul plan, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rob Portman had a different message.

“I pray that it will not pass,” Portman said on Monday, March 15. His comments came in a meeting with members of the Dayton Daily News editorial board.

Portman said the plan that Obama is trying to get the Democratic-controlled Congress to approve would increase costs.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Portman. “…We’re going to have higher, not lower costs.”

[emphasis mine - KH]

Now, for those of you slow on the uptake Rob Portman is saying he is opposed to the current health care proposal because it will lead to the opposite of what is needed: higher not lower costs. With me so far? Good.

Enter Seth Bringman and the Ohio Democratic Party who apprently struggle with these basic concepts:

Seth Bringman, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, lashed back at Portman in an e-mail.

“While Rob Portman is praying for the status quo on health care, we will be praying for the millions of Americans without health insurance and the millions more middle class families who can’t afford rising health care costs,” said Bringman.

Um, except that isn’t what he said at all. He isn’t praying for the “status quo” – whatever that is at this point – but for the current proposal to be stopped.

Notice too, how Bringman tries his typical rhetorical Jedi mind trick asserting that Portman is opposed to helping middle class families who can’t afford “rising health care costs.”

One small problem: Portman is arguing that the bill will in fact raise costs and therefor is bad for American families and businesses – which is the obvious point of his comments.

In fact, Portman has been consistently making this point for months as the health care debate has played out and has said that what is needed is not Bringman’s big bad bogeyman of the “status quo” but reform that lowers costs and provides greater access. Anyone with a elementary school ability to read and process basic logic would understand this.

But it again appears that Seth Bringman and the ODP lack these basic skills. Sad isn’t it?  But education reform is the topic of a whole ‘nother post.