With opponents of government-run health care speaking out at town
hall meetings in growing numbers and with increased ferocity
(watch this video
of Arlen Specter hearing it from constituents), liberals are
attempting to delegitimize citizens exercising their rights by
portraying them as part of some ominous conspiracy run by evil
corporations.
Lee Fang of the Center for American Progress’s ThinkProgess blog
snarls:
ThinkProgress reported today on the growing number of angry
right-wing activists viciously harassing Democratic, as well as
moderate Republican, members of Congress on health care reform.
Jonathan Cohn wrote that these tactics represent “classic
astroturf organizing, in some cases bankrolled by the health
care industry.” The insurance industry is sending staff members
to over 30 states to “confront” lawmakers about health care
reform. Simultaneously, Cohn writes, the health care industry
will use the August recess to “flood the airwaves with ads
picking apart reform legislation.” Indeed, AHIP, the lobbying
juggernaut for the health insurance industry, has promised to
change its tone and begin running negative ads on reform soon.
The site also runs a
video in which Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin says:
“These health insurance companies and people like them are
trying to load these town hall meetings for visual impact on
television. They want to show thousands of people screaming
‘socialism’ and try to overcome the public sentiment, which now
favors health care reform. That’s almost like flooding the
switchboards on Capitol Hill. It doesn’t prove much other than
the switchboards have limited capacity, so we want to have a
balanced approach that allows members of Congress to hear both
sides of the story, rather than be sucker-punched, or
sidetracked by these tactics.”
This is absolutely absurd on several levels. For one thing,
I’ve been closely tracking liberal groups involved in the health
care fight for some time, and all I’ve been hearing is how much
money unions and other activist groups would be pouring into
fighting for liberal health care legislation. Last July, the
group Health Care for Americans Now
announced the start of a $40 million campaign expressly for
this purpose, and the groups were loaded with backers from big
labor and groups such as MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, and ACORN.
As I've reported
elsewhere, the group received a $10 million grant from Atlantic
Philanthropies, whose CEO, Gara LaMarche, was previously director
of U.S. programs for the Open Society Institute, the
philanthropic foundation founded and chaired by George Soros.
In June, I attended a news conference in which HCAN and other
liberal groups announced they would
spend $82 million in an effort to support President Obama's
health care push and press for legislation that includes a new
government-run plan modeled after Medicare. Howard Dean, former
chair of the DNC, is involved in this supposedly grassroots
effort.
But aside from this, Durbin’s statement that the American public
is supportive of the Democratic health care agenda and thus any
people protesting it at townhall meetings are merely tools of the
insurance companies flies in the face of the actual polling data
we have. For instance, a Pew poll released
last week found that just 38 percent of Americans favor the
health care proposals making their way through the Democratic
Congress, compared to 44 percent who are opposed. And you can’t
pin this one on “angry right-wing activists.” The poll also found
that among independents, only 34 percent favored the proposals,
compared with 49 percent who opposed them (the number opposed
rose to 70 percent among independents who said they were
following the health care debate closely).
The liberal effort to discredit American citizens who are
expressing their views on an issue of vital importance is
completely without merit, but it is instructive. It tells us that
liberals know that despite their tremendous advantages in terms
of resources and power in Washington, they are losing the health
care messaging war. It’s becoming clear that Americans are not
ready for a government takeover of the health care system, and
they aren’t going to sit by idly while Democrats ram it down
their throats.
