Contradiction

I admit I'm late on this one but something just occured to me today.

How is it that last year when Democrats were trying to pass the stimulus bill Republicans kept saying that the government can't create jobs and then when Democrats were trying to pass the health care reform bill Republicans kept saying they should be focused on trying to create jobs instead and nobody ever called them out on this contradiction?

Might be something to remember going forward when Democrats try to pass more jobs bills through Congress to bring down the unemployment rate.

Steele's Days Are Numbered

In the course of a regular daily conference call between senior Congressional communicators, House and Senate aides berated RNC staffers over Steele's comments that the GOP would not be able to take back the House, and that even if they did, the party would not be prepared to lead.

A senior Senate aide brought up Steele's comments, arguing that he was ruining what should be several days of glowing press for the GOP in the wake of retirement announcements from Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Chris Dodd (D-CT).

"Steele is setting us far back with his comments and it needs to stop," the aide said, according to 2 sources who were on the call.

RNC research director Jeff Berkowitz called the Senate aide out of line, but the Senate aide called Steele a "fool," sources said.

Hotlineoncall

If you think this information somehow got leaked accidentally you are crazy. Someone wants everybody to know that at least one Senate leadership aide not only thinks RNC Chairman Michael Steele is a fool but actually said so on a conference call with their peers. I don't think Steele will make it to April as head of the RNC, but after reading through this account several times I think I might be too generous with that estimate.

FINALLY Ruth Marcus Concern Trolls In The Right Direction

Wait, you mean to tell me that Republicans are lying through their teeth about healthcare reform? Say it aint so...

He's On A Roll

FINALLY someone or something has woken up Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and he has started attacking the Republicans for their unprecedented obstructionism!!!

Now if he could just take some of that and aim it at certain members of his own caucus...

The Picture Gets Clearer....And Uglier

Rachel Maddow carried the new and breaking details tonight about the circumstances of the Census worker's death in Kentucky that is believed to be a result of foul play. Its getting harder not to just come out and say that he was targeted because of his work with the Census.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now THAT'S Karma

The right wingers have been going after ACORN with impugnity since last year. With recent revelations about bad actors getting caught up in gotcha journalists Republicans in Congress felt like they finally had ACORN right where they wanted them. And so, as is the norm these days, they jumped first and asked questions later in order to try to either

A)Put Democrats on the spot on whether they would vote against ACORN which has been a big time Democratic supporter or

B)Defund ACORN which they feel will give them an advantage nationally in voter registration efforts.

But unfortunately for them they ended up casting too wide of a net.

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.

Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who's Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.
The language was written by the GOP and filed as a "motion to recommit" in the House, where it passed 345-75.

POGO is reaching out to its members to identify other companies who have engaged in the type of misconduct that would make them ineligible for federal funds.

Now all year political junkies have noticed that Republicans have tried to position themselves as strong on national security again. Putting aside for the moment the fact that they took us into the war in Iraq under false pretenses, they seemed to really feel that by advocating torture and abuses of our Constitution that people would just flock to them in droves in the midterms next year. Hell there has even been talk about trying to get Dick Cheney to run for President in 2012. Well even if they had an ice cube's chance in hell of such a turnaround I don't think defunding almost the entire Military Industrial Complex is going to be helping that cause.

Now as a progressive I believe there is definitely a need and a place for our military. But there is no doubt that defense contractors have gamed the system to maximize their profitablilty. A lot of that gaming having to do with pretty much bribing Republicans and some corporatist Democrats to protect their interests. Our system of military procurement is severely broken and nobody has been willing to truly take it on. Maybe, just maybe, the Republicans have now done us a favor that no Democrat would have ever had the stones to pull off. And all because they were trying to score cheap political points against an organization that does a lot of great work in some of he worst neighborhoods in our country. And if we can get our military procurement problems under control that will have a tremendously positive effect on our long term deficits and debt.

Talk about a hidden benefit.

Perfect Timing

I know that a lot of liberals and progressives are dissappointed and anxious about the news that health care reform will not be voted on before the August Congressional break but I think since there isn't much we can do about that now, we try to turn that lemon into lemonade so to speak. Right now we should be gearing up for a war. And that war is over public opinion polling for health care reform. We already know that some people who want to vote for reform on our side of the aisle are afraid to because they represent purple or red leaning districts or states. There are also those on our side of the aisle who don't want to piss off their benefactors in the health insurance industry. But if we can drive up public opinion in the interim we not only give cover to those Democrats who are worried about how it will play with their constituents, we also take cover away from those corrupt Democrats who have their hand in the cookie jar.

Now quite obviously massive forces will be lined up against health care reform during this time as well. And the truth is some of our ConservDems may not put up their own ads opposing reform but they will wink and nod as the GOP does as well as health insurance industry backed advocacy groups. So to kill the anti reform agenda we have to effectively kill their arguments and we have now been given the tool by which we can usher in their destruction.

Sam Stein of Huffington Post is reporting on internal polling from an outfit called On Messaging Inc which was commissioned by the GOP to come up with a media strategy to kill health care reform. But on the way to typing up talking points for the Republicans, OMI discovered a few inconvenient facts about how the public views health care right now and the need for reform.

The study, put together by the Virginia-based On Message Inc., didn't sugarcoat the landscape. Listing the White House talking points -- that health care reform would be budget-neutral, that a public plan was necessary to stimulate competition, that consumers would be able to keep their coverage, and that Republicans are being obstructions -- the survey concluded: "If Obama Is Allowed To Sell This... He Wins."

Since then, the Republican Party has worked mightily to avoid that Obama victory. And many of their moves appear to have been derived from that OMI survey. Turning to time-tested rhetorical devices, the GOP has shifted the debate onto more friendly terrain.

For example, Republican officials have begun stressing that America has "the best health care in the world" (a sentiment supported by 54 percent of the OMI survey respondents) while simultaneously insisting that the system is "badly in need of reform" (which 70 percent of respondents said was true).

Case in point: "You know the bottom line is that we have the best health care system in the world, there's no doubt about that," RNC Chairman Michael Steele declared two weeks after the memo was finalized. "But this is a health care system that needs reform, and the reform that we've been trying to focus on is the cost side of this."

According to the OMI survey, Republicans are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to the health care debate. For starters, 48 percent of the public said they trusted Democrats to "fix the health care problem in America." Only 29 percent said the same for Republicans. Meanwhile, 58 percent of respondents said that they favored "creating a government run health insurance agency that will compete with private insurance companies," while only 35 percent were opposed.

Now if you ask me there are TONS we can do with this information. Primarily we can get our folks to put together web ads on youtube and blast out press releases to the major networks to drum up interest as well as the major blogs. These ads could be thrown together quickly at very low cost. Here is how I would envision an ad of this sort.

You start off with Republicans using their talking points on health care reform and the are all saying the same thing. You start off with one at a time and then after you have 4 or 5 different Republicans using the same talking point you superimpose them saying the same thing at the same time. And then you ask the question "what is the source of their ideas on health care reform. Is it doctors? No. Is it Nurses? No. Is it patients? No. Its from a messaging group. The same messaging group found x statistics showing public support for health care reform. Its time to recognize that Republicans are not working in good faith for the American people."

Thats a rough script of course but I am sure that people a lot more talented than I can could come up with better dialogue. Then at the end we give a link to honest information not only on health care reform but also on public polling about health care reform. And give the numbers of Democratic Leadership telling people to call and express their support for health care reform.

A similar ad can be made about the Frank Luntz talking points as well. I would especially love to see an ad of all the many Republicans using the words "government takeover" of health care over and over again and then the voice over can point to Frank Luntz as the person who came up with that phrase and then illuminate quotes where he himself admitted he doesn't know a thing about health care reform.

If we get enough people watching videos and seeing that the Republicans are not working in good faith then we can at the least get them to tune out all of the coming attacks on health care for the whole month of August. And so if we can turn them away from GOP attacks then we have the opportunity to convince them about the advantages of health care reform for everyone.

I really hope we can work together to pull this off so that once Congress comes back in September we will have removed any obstacles having to do with public opinion to Democrats in Congress being able to do the right thing and passing health care reform in the fall.

If anybody has any other ideas please let me know.


Here is Cenk Uygur talking about the report about OMI,

A No Win Situation.

With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, President Obama has set up what may be an epic battle between the establishment GOP and their voting base. The problem is of course this, opposing Sotomayor on specious grounds will further alienate Hispanics from the Republican Party. On the other hand if Republicans in Congress do not vigorously oppose Sotomayor then their wingnut base, led by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and countless other media hacks, will throw a major hissy fit. Now in my mind the calculus should be simple. Republicans in Congress SHOULD nip at Sotomayor's ankles a little bit and then confirm her with a lot of support from their side. At a time when the GOP is bleeding from just about every demographic, they can ill afford to lose Hispanics for a generation. But unfortunately the establishment GOP has shown little appetite for taking on the base of their party, even when they know not doing so will hurt them electorally. Not only that we have seen already this year how cowardly Congressional Republicans are when it comes to taking on Rushbo and his pals. I think its highly likely that Limbaugh and the rest will say some pretty disgusting and demeaning things about Sotomayor and if there aren't establishment GOP voices willing to pushback on the vitriol it might not be enough that they vote for Sotomayor. The Republican Party is now seen as a party for southern white males. This may end up pushing that perception to southern white RACIST males. Now hopefully they will grow a backbone in the next week or so and realize that the base will get over it if Sotomayor is confirmed but Hispanics will not if she doesn't. But I have no faith in their ability to lead their base instead of allowing the tail to wag the dog. I guess we will all have to see how this plays out.