The Republican party has a disturbing habit of comparing Obamacare to some of the worst human atrocities in history.
On two occasions, Republicans have denounced the Affordable Care Act as worse than the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which—among other provisions—required law enforcement to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive slave, and punished anyone who aided a slave with fines and imprisonment.
The first remark comes from New Hampshire state Rep. Bill O’Brien, who—during a rally last August—summed up Obamacare as such:
And what is Obamacare? It is a law as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that allowed slave owners to come to New Hampshire and seize African Americans and use the federal courts to take them back to federal … to slave states.
A few months later, conservative columnist George Will borrowed the reference, responding to Democrats who say “the Affordable Care Act is the law” with a quip: “Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law and then we change them.”
