a principled argument for lies, on the grounds that they are necessary to support the desirable policy
It’s not like this is unusual. In the generic form this is probably as old as politics.
Here is a recent example: Jonathan Gruber being candid about how the Obamacare sausage was made:
This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure that the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay. So it was written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law that said healthy people are going to pay in—if you made it explicit that healthy people pay in sick people get money it would not have passed. Okay. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical in getting the thing to pass
It’s not like this is unusual. In the generic form this is probably as old as politics.
Here is a recent example: Jonathan Gruber being candid about how the Obamacare sausage was made: