An Editor's Rhetoric

    In the Austin Chronicle, I found an article under the Point Austin section about Obamacare. The arguments the author made were directed against the Republican party of Texas. Specifically, they were against the Texas governor Rick Perry, senator Ted Cruz (that senator who's apparently leading the whole government shutdown business), and the attorney general, Greg Abbot. It is true, this article was about an issue presiding in the United States legislature. But the focus was on the state level, where the governor and attorney general made their desires clear: that Obamacare would never be implemented in Texas.
    The author, Michael King, is a writer and editor for the Austin Chronicle. The author does a fine job of appealing to a democratic ideals. The entire article is about how the governor and company would like nothing more than for Obamacare to burn. This is not to say the author has argued fairly - only that the author has argued with bias. Every word in the article was used against the Republicans in some way. For example, the Republicans were said to "leave many thousands of women and their families without access to basic health care services." One might say that's the reverse of sentimental appeals. It puts the Republicans in the bad guy's shoes, where we see them as leaving helpless women and children to fend for themselves. Could the author have not said, "leav[ing] many thousands of people without access to basic health care services"? The preceding text did mention Women's Health Care, but why bring this up? The author was explaining how Republicans aren't "actually improving or expanding health care for the more than six million Texans." Are men not included in these six million? When the author can just talk about the suffering, innocent, poor women, and how it's apparently the Republican's fault, then there's some logical fallacies.
    Fortunately, the author does bring up a counter-argument of sorts. It's not so much that the author goes for the Republicans, but instead acknowledges that Obamacare may not be the best that in can be, and that a cooperation of both sides might be able to improve it. But he continues his intense bias with the last paragraph. He declares that once, opposing parties could come to agreements. But due to the Republicans, we can't. Therefore, Republicans are bad, or so one might be led to believe. The author even tosses in a number: 48 million Americans "without health insurance." Americans? Not just "individuals" or "people"? "By, God, these are our neighbors!" one might exclaim. And the sentence finally ends with the author saying that Republicans "offer only one, irresponsible answer: No." Surely, Republicans have some argument that consists of more than one syllable, so I would say a generalization is happening here.