cloud the issue

He ignores the textualist part entirely, and uses part of Lincoln’s historical argument from his July 4 speech to cloud the issue and reverse the claim, arguing that the lack of perpetuity language means the union can be destroyed.

As Wajahat Ali writes at the Daily Beast, the language of "hate-fueled violence" favored by leading Democrats and the mainstream media only serves to cloud the issue, since the threat of violence "is primarily coming from a single source":

These fears cloud the issue at hand: If we want more control over our own privacy, then we need to put our focus towards what data the government collects and what they do with that data.

To cloud the issue, backers carted out the old blue-smoke-and-mirrors tricks.

They’ll cloud the issue until the cloud becomes the issue.