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The Gruber Charade

ABC's Jonathan Karl put it amusingly during Tuesday's White House press briefing: The videos of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber dismissing the American voters as stupid and gullible, smiling about the lack of transparency during its debate and passing, have become their own "hit series."

Yet the charade of liberals trying to deny his importance in the law's drafting continues, starting with the president himself.

President Obama and Press Secretary Josh Earnest have dismissed Gruber as a mere "adviser" on health care, when records show dozens of visits by Gruber to the White House and hundreds of thousands of dollars paid for his consulting on the health care law. Yet, then-Sen. Obama in 2006 said he'd "stolen ideas" from Gruber and others "liberally" on health care reform.

Even former Obama administration official Steve Rattner said that Gruber was an "important figure in putting Obamacare together" and "the man" for the administration on health care legislation.

A new video out last week showed Gruber discussing how he and Obama were in the same room when they formed the idea of the "Cadillac tax," the huge tax on high-cost insurance plans that would inevitably affect the middle class since, as the Weekly Standard pointed out, it is tied to CPI inflation rather than medical inflation.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) either forgot or pretended to forget who Gruber was, despite citing him by name in 2009 when the law was being first debated.

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod, after angrily tweeting that you would find Gruber's picture in the dictionary next to "stupid," acknowledged he was one of the people who "worked so hard" to make Obamacare a reality.

More than enough proof exists of Gruber's influence over Obamacare and his acknowledgement that deceiving the public was important to it becoming law. The fact that Democrats keep trying to deny his role, and now, his existence, is well beyond silly.