Democrashield
emmagold
Filed under: 2010 Election, Conservatives, Government, Health Care, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Senate | Tags: 2010, Democrats, Fail, Frank Luntz, Health Care, OH-SEN, Ohio, Republicans, Rob Portman
Ohio’s Republican Senate candidate, Rob Portman, goes extremely off-message talking about the GOP’s health care reform plan:
“I will tell you, I don’t think there is a Republican alternative at this point,” he said. He said he reached that conclusion after talking to Senate leaders and lawmakers about the GOP’s position. “There isn’t one,” he said.
You heard it straight from the elephant’s mouth: the Democrats have a health care reform plan and the Republicans don’t. So not only is the GOP the Party of No, they’re also the Party of No Ideas.
But hey, they have talking points. Because there’s the modern GOP for you, putting hollow messaging over real reform.
No wonder these guys are in the minority.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Media, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Congress, Democrats, Epic Fail, Judiciary, Republicans, SCOTUS, Sonia Sotomayor, Surrender
It looks like that, in the wake of Judge Sotomayor’s accomplished academic and judicial records, her abundance of experience, moderate stances and bipartisan history, the GOP is giving up the fight against her nomination to the Supreme Court:
Top Senate Republican strategists tell POLITICO that, barring unknown facts about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the GOP plans no scorched-earth opposition to her confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.
More than 24 hours after the White House unveiling, no senator has come out in opposition to Sotomayor’s confirmation.
“The sentiment is overwhelming that the Senate should do due diligence but should not make a mountain out of a molehill,” said a top Senate Republican aide. “If there’s no ‘there’ there, we shouldn’t try to create one.”
[...]
However, senators on both sides said they are confident that unless the process takes some startling turn, Sotomayor will be confirmed in plenty of time for the court’s opening on the fabled first Monday in October.
[...]
Republicans’ only hope of derailing Sotomayor would be a filibuster — a move countless Republicans have opposed in the context of judicial nominees. And even if they took that route, they are virtually certain to lose badly.
Republicans have 40 votes in the Senate — and it’s hard to imagine someone like Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) or anyone from a state with big Hispanic population blocking the judge.
[Emphasis mine]
The GOP would have very little power to block Sotomayor even if they had some kind of solid ground upon which to oppose her.
If out-of-context quotes are garbage made-up statistics about ‘reversal rates’ are the most conservatives can lob against a 17-year veteran of the federal bench, then Judge Sotomayor has nothing to worry about.
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s been less than 48 hours since President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and got her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Judge Sotomayor has been a federal judge for nearly 17 years–she has more federal judicial service under her belt than any other sitting Supreme Court Justice had when they were nominated.
But here we are, less than 2 days from her nomination, and conservatives have smeared Sotomayor as “incompetent”, “unqualified”, “racist”, “sexist”, “bigoted”, a “judicial activist”, etc.
Republicans are ignoring Judge Sotomayor’s long, accomplished academic career and longer, more accomplished judicial career in order to launch superfluous political smears based on nothing substantive.
The GOP isn’t even saying they’re going to reserve their judgment until Judge Sotomayor testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They have had nearly no time to review her record as a federal judge, yet they have already declared her unfit to serve on the Supreme Court.
Where is all this unwarranted, unprecedented hostility coming from? This exchange between MSNBC’s David Shuster and Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton explains it all:
David Shuster: “What evidence do you have that she would put her feelings and politics above the rule of law?”
Tom Fitton: “Because President Obama chose her.”
Judge Sotomayor is absolutely, undeniably qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, period. I doubt conservatives will find anything substantive in her judicial record–if they even get around to looking at it–that will undermine that.
(I mean, it’s not like Judge Sotomayor voted to uphold police strip-searches of children, unlike Judges Roberts and Alito did in Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and Doe v. Groody, respectively)
Republicans are acting in bad faith, period. They would have tried equally hard to torpedo anyone President Obama appointed to the Supreme Court, no matter what their record, accomplishments, or judicial philosophy were.
And, in all likelihood, if the GOP goes to the bat to oppose Sonia Sotomayor, they will fail. In the past 30 years, only 3 Supreme Court nominees have failed to make it to the high court, and only one of those was rejected; the other two withdrew their names from consideration.
Plus, the GOP is extraordinarily weakened–they have only 40 Senators, meaning that they would have to maintain total party unity to successfully filibuster Judge Sotomayor, an extraordinarily unlikely prospect. And with only 7 seats on the Judiciary Committee–as opposed to the Democrats’ 12–it’s extremely unlikely they’ll be able to block her in committee, either.
So, with all probability, despite the GOP’s sound and fury, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be seated on the Supreme Court. And if the GOP mounts an all-out defense, history will remember that the Republican Party attempted to filibuster the first Hispanic woman to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court–a woman who, in the end, won’t be much more liberal than the man she is to replace.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Race, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Rights | Tags: Courts, Democrats, Judiciary, Racism, Republicans, Sandra Day O'Connor, SCOTUS, Sexism, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court
Let’s debunk some right-wing talking points on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, shall we?
Judge Sotomayor said that the appeals courts make policy! That proves she’s an activist judge!
While it’s true that Judge Sotomayor said:
All of the legal defense funds out there, they are looking for people with court of appeals experience because the court of appeals is where policy is made
She did follow that up with:
I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it.
“She’s not wrong,” said Jeffrey Segal, a professor of law at Stony Brook University. “Of course they make policy… You can, on one hand, say Congress makes the law and the court interprets it. But on the other hand the law is not always clear. And in clarifying those laws, the courts make policy.”
[...]
Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University, was equally dismissive of this emerging conservative talking point. “She was saying something which is the absolute judicial equivalent of saying the sun rises each morning. It is not a controversial proposition at all that the overwhelming quantity of law making work in the federal system is done by the court of appeals… It is thoroughly uncontroversial to anyone other than a determined demagogue.”
[Emphasis mine]
Sotomayor said that Latina judges are better than white male judges! That’s racist!
It’s true that Judge Sotomayor said:
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Actually, the full sentence is:
Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Looks like we’re missing some context here; keep in mind that Judge Sotomayor was discussing race and sex discrimination cases when she made these remarks:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice [Benjamin] Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
[Emphasis mine]
Sounds a lot less controversial when you put everything in context, huh?
Many of Sotomayor’s rulings have been overturned upon appeal, which proves that she’s an inferior judge.
Actually, Judge Sotomayor’s record on reversals is far above average:
Over each of the last several terms, the [Supreme Court] has reversed 75% of the cases that have come before it.
[...]
Sotomayor’s decisions were upheld far more frequently than the norm. Apparently, out of the 380-odd opinions she penned while on the Second Circuit, the Supreme Court granted cert on just six. And of those six, Sotomayor was reversed on only three. That’s a .500 batting average
[Emphasis mine]
So while the Supreme Court reverses 75% of the rulings they review, they have reversed only 50% of Sotomayor’s rulings they reviewed.
Filed under: Conservatives, IOKIYAR, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Craziness, Hypocrisy, Michael Steele, RNC, RNC Chair, Stupidity, Tea Partays
I almost missed this little gem from RNC Chair Michael Steele’s speech yesterday:
While promising a more aggressive approach, Steele also insisted that Republicans will show “class” in countering Obama.
“We are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of President Bush.”
Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of last month’s tax day tea parties, here’s the GOP’s “class” and “dignity”:
I eagerly await either Michael Steele’s explanation of how this constitutes class and dignity, or his full-throated denunciation of the tea party protests in the name of class and dignity.
Of course, in the interest of living, I won’t hold my breath.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Iraq, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Democrats, Incompetence, Intelligence, Iraq, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Speaker Pelosi, Torture
So DC is consumed with trying to figure out what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about torture and when.
Strange, since I thought that the people who committed crimes were more important than the people who heard about them.
Still, what led to this media-created firestorm? First, some Congressional Democrats–Pelosi included–discussed launching a truth commission to determine who was responsible for the authorization/implementation of torture.
Second, the CIA released several documents showing that Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats were briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques” in 2002. There was no indication which techniques were described, nor was there indication of whether Congress was told those techniques were purely hypothetical or being implemented.
Nonetheless, Republicans jumped on the documents of proof that Speaker Pelosi knew about waterboarding in 2002 and was therefore somewhat culpable in the torture coverup. But that conclusion isn’t borne out by the evidence–it makes assumptions about what was in those briefings that aren’t grounded in reality.
The CIA alleged that Congress was told exactly what they were doing; Pelosi contradicted them and said the CIA was misleading the public, just like they had mislead Congress in 2002. Since there are no solid records of what the CIA told Congress–since these were classified intelligence briefings–we don’t know who is telling the truth.
Conservatives are taking the CIA’s side because it’s politically advantageous to them, but it’s not very sensible. It’s hardly as if the CIA is an objective, unbiased player in all this–doesn’t it serve the CIA’s interest to divert attention away from the implementation of torture and onto a political sideshow? I mean, if there was a comprehensive investigation into torture, wouldn’t it put the entire CIA under a microscope? They have a vested interest in clouding up the investigation with political posturing and conflict, since it saves them from having to confront–and be held responsible for–their role in torture.
Plus, the CIA is pulling together records of these briefings from whatever they have lying around from 2002. Remember, the CIA circa 2002 wasn’t a bastion of competence and credibility; that was about the same time they were gathering the faulty intelligence that led to the Iraq War. As much as John Boehner may cry about the poor maligned “intelligence professionals” I don’t think you can give them the benefit of the doubt.
This story is only a few days old and we’re already seeing evidence that the CIA’s recollection of events isn’t accurate. Take this, for instance:
Almost every briefing described in the document — including the September 2002 Pelosi briefing that’s directly at issue — refers to “EITs,” or enhanced interrogation techniques, as a subject that was discussed. But according to a former intelligence professional who has participated in such briefings, that term wasn’t used until at least 2006.
That’s not just an issue of semantics. The former intel professional said that by using the term in the recently compiled document, the CIA was being “disingenuous,” trying to make it appear that the use of such techniques was part of a “formal and mechanical program.” In fact, said the former intel pro, it wasn’t until 2006 that — amid growing concerns about the program among some in the Bush administration — the EIT program was formalized, and the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were properly defined and given a name.
And this:
Rep. David Obey has sent a letter to [CIA Director Leon] Panetta complaining that a staffer identified in the documents as being briefed was in fact denied access to the briefing.
And this:
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who chairs the oversight subcommittee of the House intelligence committee, told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (h/t Democratic Underground):
On our subcommittee we are beginning an inquiry into a situation … initiated by the ranking minority member to look at a situation where the CIA did mislead the Congress … a documented issue of the CIA misleading the Congress.
A Schakowsky spokesman told TPMmuckraker that she was referring to the findings of a CIA inspector general report, portions of which were released last fall, which concluded that the agency had withheld crucial information from Congress and DOJ investigators who were probing whether CIA personnel committed crimes relating to the shooting of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.
[Emphasis added]
And:
April 2002 (two briefings), September 2002: When Bob Graham first asked the CIA when they had briefed him on torture, they gave him a list of four dates, two in April 2002, and two in September 2002. However, when Graham reviewed his famously detailed notes, he discovered he had not attended any briefing on three of those dates (both April dates and one September date). The CIA conceded he was correct on the issue.
[...]
February 4, 2003: The CIA claims that, along with Pat Roberts and two staffers, it briefed John Rockefeller on EITs “in considerable detail” including “how the water board was used.” Rockefeller says, however, that he “was not present and was not later briefed individually by anyone in the intelligence community.”
And finally, from the CIA themselves:
As the agency has pointed out more than once, its list — compiled in response to congressional requests — reflects the records it has. These are notes, memos, and recollections, not transcripts and recordings.
[Emphasis mine]
In short, the CIA hasn’t proven themselves trustworthy in the past and they don’t appear to be very trustworthy on this particular issue.
Let me be clear: this entire issue is nothing more than a political witchhunt. The CIA is doing classic CYA, trying to keep their complicity in the torture debacle from becoming public. The GOP is piggybcking on the CIA’s CYA in order to attack Speaker Pelosi and Congressional Democrats.
They want to drive a wedge between Pelosi and the anti-torture left by trying to mixing Pelosi up into the Bush administration’s torture program, hoping she’ll be forced to justify at least some of it.
They want to throw enough dirt on Pelosi to keep her from launching a truth commission, in case she ends up implicated.
And most of all, they want a scalp. They want to destroy Pelosi’s career, make that the opening salvo in their much dreamed-of political comeback. All the GOP knows to do anymore is drum up a scandal and ride it to political success; it looks like they’re hoping like that particular chapter of their playbook still works.
Let’s not take our eye off the ball. The Bush administration authorized and implemented torture. They broke the law; they need to be held accountable. Whoever may have been told what when isn’t important; who actually justified torture and made it happen is. Don’t let the real criminals get away; don’t let them divert your attention onto trivial political distractions.
Filed under: Conservatives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal | Tags: Epic Fail, Fail, Hypocrisy, Michael Steele, Republicans, RNC, RNC Chair
RNC Chairman Michael Steele just declared that “The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over.”
Over? When did it ever begin?
The way I see it, the GOP has a lot to apologize about; we haven’t heard nearly enough contrition from Republicans to even begin to make up for it.
Heck, I think Michael Steele alone has a fair amount to apologize for; I mean, wasn’t he doing such a poor job that the RNC took away much of his power as Chairman?
UPDATE: As Steele spins out all that happy talk about the Republican Party, keep this in mind:
Today in an interview with Fox News, Steele suggested that if too much of his power is taken away, he may resign:
They can contemplate all they want to, but the reality is if they want a figurehead chairman you can have a figurehead chairman, but it won’t be Michael Steele.
Steele’s threatening to quit, yet we’re supposed to believe the GOP is doing just fine? Please.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Health Care, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Democrats, Health Care, Republicans
One of the newest right-wing talking points in the debate over health care reform is invoking the fear that health care will end up being “rationed.”
Of course, that doesn’t make sense–if the Democratic plan is implemented, people with private insurance will be allowed to keep their current coverage. On the other hand, those without coverage will be able to opt into a public health care option, so I don’t see how providing health care to people without insurance would somehow constitute rationing, but…
More to the point, isn’t health care in America already rationed? I mean, whether or not you even have health insurance depends on where you work/how much money you have; same goes for the quality of coverage you can get.
And insurance companies–being private entities–can deny people coverage for a variety of reasons, such as a preexisting condition; even if you have the means to procure health insurance, you can’t always get it.
And even if you do have health insurance, your insurer can deny your claim for a particular procedure if they so choose. Plus, most health insurance plans involve a copay–you pay for part of your medical care while your insurer pays for the rest. Same typically goes for prescription drugs–most insurance plans will only pay for a certain amount of medication per year, forcing you to pay for the rest if you go over that limit.
Health care isn’t unlimited in America; a variety of different factors determine how much care–if any at all–you can get. In fact, profit motive drives insurance companies to ration care; the less health care they give to the fewest amount of people, the more money they make. Face it, in the United States insurance companies get rich by rationing out health care as strictly as they can.
That’s why we need some kind of public option–because private insurance companies can’t afford to cover everyone and provide them the health care they need. But I wouldn’t expect intellectually-honest, worthwhile arguments against health care reform from the Party of No, who were telling us just a few years ago that there was no crisis and that America had the best health care system in the world.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: CIA, Congress, Democrats, George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Shame, Spin, Torture
Recently, CIA released memos indicating that Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker of the House, was briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques” in 2002.
What those memos don’t indicate is which particular “enhanced interrogation techniques” Pelosi was told about, or whether waterboarding was among them. Those memos also don’t indicate whether those techniques were described as something that American forces were using/planning to use, or whether they were described to Pelosi and other members of Congress as purely hypothetical.
Right now, it’s a he-said she-said conflict between the CIA and Pelosi, and who you give more credibility to depends on where you fall politically.
Regardless, Republicans are pretending that, since Pelosi was briefed in some capacity about hypothetical “enhanced interrogation techniques” that neither she nor any other Democrat has any standing left to criticize the Bush administration or Republicans for the use of torture.
Even if you assume that members of Congress had some idea of what techniques were being implemented, this is still a false equivalence. Apples and oranges. Because there is a huge difference between people who justified and implemented torture and people who were simply told about it.
This is the standard GOP technique when they’re caught in some kind of scandal: claim the Democrats are also culpable in order to diffuse the eventual fallout.
Republicans want to shut down the torture debate because they know that it’s going to end poorly for them. A lot of politicos with vested interests in seeing the investigation end before it even begins are out there making these false equivalencies are trying to poison the well.
UPDATE: And here’s the right’s new talking point: they’re claiming that the government has documents proving definitively that torture works, but the Obama administration is refusing to declassify them in order to make the GOP look bad.
I don’t know whether such documents exist or not, but something tells me they don’t–or, at least, they don’t say what Cheney & co. are claiming they do.
Remember, the Bush administration were masters of the strategic leak, declassifying memos or leaking information at opportune moments in order to provide political cover. If they had smoking gun documents that proved torture worked, why didn’t they declassify them when they still had the power to? Even if they waited until Bush’s very last day in office, if those documents didn’t contain information that needed to be kept top secret, why didn’t they release them to the public and vindicate themselves once and for all?
And here’s the thing–even if those documents don’t exist, it doesn’t matter for Cheney and the Republicans; they can continue to claim they do in order to portray the Obama administration as acting in bad faith. The administration can’t prove that nonexistent documents don’t exist, so the Republicans can simply spin any claims that those documents aren’t there as attempts to keep those documents covered up.
I don’t think the GOP is hoping to prove that torture worked; I think they’re simply trying to taint whatever investigation may be launched. Their claims about secret smoking gun documents dovetail nicely with their allegations that Pelosi knew something and their calls for a “full investigation”; conservatives are trying to taint any investigation into torture as inherently politically-biased.
Filed under: Breaking, Government, Governors, Progressives | Tags: Connecticut, Democrats, Gay Marriage, Iowa, John Baldacci, Maine, Massachusetts, Same-Sex Marriage, Vermont
Maine Governor John Baldacci (D) just signed a bill into law that will legalize same-sex marriage in the Pine Tree State.
This makes Maine the fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage (after IA, CT, MA and VT) overall and the second state (after VT) to do it via legislation instead of a court decision.
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Health Care, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine | Tags: Congress, Democrats, Eric Cantor, Fail, Frank Luntz, GOP Playbook, Health Care Reform, Lies, Republicans
Mike Allen gives us a page out of the GOP’s playbook on their effort to block health care reform:
Here are some suggested arguments for Republicans that [GOP pollster Frank] Luntz calls “clear winners”:
—“It could lead to the government setting standards of care, instead of doctors who really know what’s best.”
—“It could lead to the government rationing care, making people stand in line and denying treatment like they do in other countries with national healthcare.”
-“President Obama wants to put the Washington bureaucrats in charge of healthcare. I want to put the medical professionals in charge, and I want patients as an equal partner.”
Luntz’s 10 pointers in “The Language of Healthcare 2009”:
(1) Humanize your approach. Abandon and exile ALL references to the “healthcare system.” From now on, healthcare is about people. Before you speak, think of the three components of tone that matter most: Individualize. Personalize. Humanize.
(2) Acknowledge the “crisis” or suffer the consequences. If you say there is no healthcare crisis, you give your listener permission to ignore everything else you say. It is a credibility killer for most Americans. A better approach is to define the crisis in your terms. “If you’re one of the millions who can’t afford healthcare, it is a crisis.” Better yet, “If some bureaucrat puts himself between you and your doctor, denying you exactly what you need, that’s a crisis.” And the best: “If you have to wait weeks for tests and months for treatment, that’s a healthcare crisis.”
(3) “Time” is the government healthcare killer. As Mick Jagger once sang, “Time is on Your Side.” Nothing else turns people against the government takeover of healthcare than the realistic expectation that it will result in delayed and potentially even denied treatment, procedures and/or medications. “Waiting to buy a car or even a house won’t kill you. But waiting for the healthcare you need – could. Delayed care is denied care.”
(4) The arguments against the Democrats’ healthcare plan must center around “politicians,” “bureaucrats,” and “Washington” … not the free market, tax incentives, or competition. Stop talking economic theory and start personalizing the impact of a government takeover of healthcare. They don’t want to hear that you’re opposed to government healthcare because it’s too expensive (any help from the government to lower costs will be embraced) or because it’s anti-competitive (they don’t know about or care about current limits to competition). But they are deathly afraid that a government takeover will lower their quality of care – so they are extremely receptive to the anti-Washington approach. It’s not an economic issue. It’s a bureaucratic issue.
(5) The healthcare denial horror stories from Canada & Co. do resonate, but you have to humanize them. You’ll notice we recommend the phrase “government takeover” rather than “government run” or “government controlled” It’s because too many politician say “we don’t want a government run healthcare system like Canada or Great Britain” without explaining those consequences. There is a better approach. “In countries with government run healthcare, politicians make YOUR healthcare decisions. THEY decide if you’ll get the procedure you need, or if you are disqualified because the treatment is too expensive or because you are too old. We can’t have that in America.”
(6) Healthcare quality = “getting the treatment you need, when you need it.” That is how Americans define quality, and so should you. Once again, focus on the importance of timeliness, but then add to it the specter of “denial.” Nothing will anger Americans more than the chance that they will be denied the healthcare they need for whatever reason. This is also important because it is an attribute of a government healthcare system that the Democrats CANNOT offer. So say it. “The plan put forward by the Democrats will deny people treatments they need and make them wait to get the treatments they are allowed to receive.”
(7) “One-size-does-NOT-fit-all.” The idea that a “committee of Washington bureaucrats” will establish the standard of care for all Americans and decide who gets what treatment based on how much it costs is anathema to Americans. Your approach? Call for the “protection of the personalized doctor-patient relationship.” It allows you to fight to protect and improve something good rather than only fighting to prevent something bad.
(8) WASTE, FRAUD, and ABUSE are your best targets for how to bring down costs. Make no mistake: the high cost of healthcare is still public enemy number one on this issue – and why so many Americans (including Republicans and conservatives) think the Democrats can handle healthcare better than the GOP. You can’t blame it on the lack of a private market; in case you missed it, capitalism isn’t exactly in vogue these days. But you can and should blame it on the waste, fraud, and abuse that is rampant in anything and everything the government controls.
(9) Americans will expect the government to look out for those who truly can’t afford healthcare. Here is the perfect sentence for addressing cost and the limited role for government that wins you allies rather than enemies: “A balanced, common sense approach that provides assistance to those who truly need it and keeps healthcare patient-centered rather than government-centered for everyone.”
(10) It’s not enough to just say what you’re against. You have to tell them what you’re for. It’s okay (and even necessary) for your campaign to center around why this healthcare plan is bad for America. But if you offer no vision for what’s better for America, you’ll be relegated to insignificance at best and labeled obstructionist at worst. What Americans are looking for in healthcare that your “solution” will provide is, in a word, more: “more access to more treatments and more doctors…with less interference from insurance companies and Washington politicians and special interests.”
[Emphasis mine]
The GOP used to thrive on messaging memos like these, so expect to hear these talking points repeated ad nauseum by nearly every Republican politican and conservative commentator under the sun.
Problem is, this memo does nothing but craft and take down an elaborate strawman instead of commenting on the Democrats’ actual health care reform plan.
In reality, Democrats are proposing a program that would help Americans without health insurance buy it from the same private corporations that everyone else gets their health insurance from. There is also a public option that would let people choose to either retain their private health insurance or opt to enroll in a government plan. Note the use of the words “option”, “choose” and “opt” in that last sentence–nobody would ever be forced into the public option, contrary to what the Luntz memo suggests.
And keep in mind that the GOP has no alternative plan. They can attack the Democratic health care reform proposal all they’d like, but America is facing a health care crisis; without a viable alternative plan, all the talking points in the world won’t do the GOP any good.
Hell, even the GOP’s new rebranding committee doesn’t have a plan:
Responding to [small business owner Ed] McKee’s question concerning the dramatic health care cost hike, [House Minority Whip Eric] Cantor said “that should be a sure sign we ought to be promoting anything that can try to bring health care costs down.” But rather than offering any ideas or policy plans for addressing health care costs, Cantor launched into a set of attacks on the health systems in the UK and Canada, saying any reform should not reflect a “government takeover.” The National Council’s policy paper on health care is similarly vague and lacks a single policy plan.
Cantor is not offering any of the promised “new policy ideas.” Instead, he is rehashing tired straw man arguments against the single-payer systems of Canada and the UK. The Obama administration has consistently opposed a single-payer program.
