Half the public...

Barack Obama said the bill informally called ObamaCare would lower medical costs for everyone--and half the public believed him.  But does anyone with an IQ above room temperature seriously believe it's possible to give tens of millions of people complete health insurance--along with armies of new government bureaucrats to administer payment--at no additional costs?

Of course not.

Yet roughly half of all Americans believed Obama's claim.  All it takes is a good speaking voice and a public that doesn't question the rhetoric they hear.

Example: Call free medical care a "basic human right" and roughly half the public won't bat an eyelash. Those who are more skeptical are derided as lacking compassion--which is a proven winning strategy in politics.

Politicians don't even have to prove that a program they're pushing will do what they claim it will. For example, those who push for tighter gun-control laws are almost never asked to cite evidence that such laws have in fact reduced gun violence.

But half of Americans support the idea of more laws making it more difficult to buy a gun.  Because it never occurs to most of 'em to ask whether criminals would bother to obey a new gun law.  All that matters is that the idea sounds plausible.