Its Catching On...

Sam Stein of HuffPo has now weighed in with a post about the hypocrisy of many GOP Congressman over the "death panel" cannard as it relates to the Terry Schiavo case.

On a conference call with reporters this week, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas.) repeated what has become the most popular conservative canard about President Obama's health care agenda. The government, Cornyn ominously warned, would end up deciding the "cost and the value of one's life, rather than leaving those decisions in the hands of the family." A "firewall" needed to be put in place to prevent this from happening.

Four and a half years ago, the Texas Republican wasn't heeding any firewalls. He was one of the lead sponsors of unprecedented government intervention to keep the permanently brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive.

"Congress has a right and a responsibility to investigate this case and explore possible means to protect the defenseless such as Terri Schiavo and others, including those in Texas who are in similar situations," Cornyn said at the time.

The Schiavo case became an embarrassment for the Republican Party and a crucial turning point in the 2006 election. Conservative lawmakers later acknowledged mistakes in their handling of the entire episode, but at the time they defended their actions by framing them as a desire to protect both life and due process.

Some of the same conservative figures taking potshots at Democrats for wanting to fund voluntary discussions about end-of-life decisions between doctors and their patients were leading the charge four years ago to contravene the decision by Schiavo's husband and guardian to remove the feeding tubes from his wife after she had spent 15 years in a vegetative state.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who this week declared that Obama was trying to set up a situation where the government would decided whether to pull the plug on grandma, missed the vote to give the government control over Schiavo's fate. But he told reporters that he backed the measure.

"I support the effort to protect Terri Schiavo," he said. "It's the first case of its kind, a chance to choose life over death. I gave the option to life."

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has also been highly critical of Obama's health care agenda, told constituents in an online forum that he supported the government's intervention into Schiavo's life. "Without knowing Terri Schiavo's wishes," he wrote, "and with so many ambiguities and distortions surrounding the situation, it was right for Congress to err on the side of life."

snip

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has publicly backed claims that Obama is setting up "death panels," predicted that people would ultimately look back at what the government did on the Schiavo matter "and realize that allowing a family to appeal in a situation like this is a totally reasonable part of the American tradition."

Gingrich, of course, was proven wrong. Polling both during and after that episode indicated widespread public distaste with Congress' efforts to keep Schiavo alive. Prominent Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio produced several studies at the time that found 60 to 80 percent of Americans were opposed to the intervention. Republicans were given a preponderance of the blame.

If we could just get a few Democrats in Congress to remind everyone just how craven the Republicans were in the Terry Schiavo case I really believe we can turn public opinion all the way around.

In the meantime what I hope is that a journalist who gets to interview any of the Republicans who are promoting the "death panel" cannard, asks them if they would be willing to intervene again should there be another situation just like the one in the Schiavo case where a person is in a persistent vegetative state and on life support but they didn't have a living will. Time to put them on the spot and watch them go running for the hills!

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,