Come on, Cantor

In a way, it's admirable how well Eric Cantor stays on message, despite evidence of the falseness of his statements.

When he says "these bills are ultimately designed to lead this country to a single-payer system, something that the American people reject," I guess he means the Americans he talks to -- the wealthy and corporations who support him and conservatives who oppose expanding any part of the social safety net.

Unfortunately, many polls show that Americans actually favor single-payer: a NYT/CBS News poll from a few weeks back, some older polls. Polls have always shown people consistently support the public plan as well.

The Republicans have done a great job with obscuring the issues, though: polls also show that most people opposed to health care reform get the details of the plans incorrect when asked (for instance, insisting that the bills will increase the budget deficit when the CBO scoring of the House and Senate bills indicates the bills will reduce it). There is also the disingenuous strategy of pointing to polls indicating a plurality of opposition to the current health care reform bills without taking into account the opposition from the left that feels the current bills don't go far enough, or claiming that the Democrats are acting without Republican involvement, conveniently forgetting all the time wasted negotiating with the Gang of Six.