GOP tactics
What is it about today’s Republicans that cause them to give up on reasoned debate and instead just distort and lie concerning the issues? The issues should be debated on merit, not lies. Case in point is the Health Care Bill presently in Congress. The ignorance and histrionics surrounding this issue is typical of right-wing talk show methods. It is a fact that Rush, FOX news and the like control and lead conservative Republican thought in this country. No right-thinking Republican elected official will dare contradict anything said by right-wing media sources for fear of national humiliation on the airwaves. How many Republican politicians have gone on Rush’s program and apologized on bended knees for having the audacity to disagree with his views? It’s a sad day in American politics when an unelected drug-addicted blow-hard talk show host runs one of our two major political parties but that is the case in today’s essentially all-white rural fundamentalist Southern regional Republican Party cult.
Republicans are in such disarray and have no constructive ideas on how to resolve the myriad of problems they created over the last eight years that their only recourse is to just try to destroy and obstruct any effort put forth by our President to resolve them. The ignorance by which they do this is astounding. The Democrats should stop trying to compromise with them and just create their own program. It is futile to try and work with a group that is dead set against any health care plan. One comment from a recent Republican critic said, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” as though he had no idea that Medicare was a government program. That ignorant view is much like driving cross country to protest the highway system. The heath care insurance and pharmaceutical industry are so desperate to derail the health care program they have resorted to the same scare tactics and lies they used in 92 and the 60’s against Medicare and Medicaid programs. It’s interesting to note that the administrative costs of private insurance companies are 20% while the administrative cost for Medicare is only 3%. Now, you tell me which one is more efficient and cost effective.
Not to be outdone by the health insurance industry, politicians like Sara Palin and other simple-minded Republicans have hysterically claimed that the government will force death panels and make euthanasia mandatory for the elderly and disabled. That is the most blatant lie perpetrated so far but the conspiracy theorists on the right fall for this kind of tactic every time. When you can’t win the debate on the facts just lie, demagogue and scare people that don’t know any better. They continuously do this on issues like abortion and the Presidents birth certificate. Anti-abortion extremists act as though abortion wasn’t even around until 1973, ignoring the fact that countless women were maimed and died from back-alley botched abortions for decades prior to 1973. That is why it was legalized in the first place. Another lie perpetrated by the right is that the government funds abortions. This is a blatant lie but it doesn’t keep right-wing zealot nutcases from repeating it ad infinitum. Are these the kind of people you want dictating to you and your doctor if you can use birth control pills or not? On the one hand they are against abortion for any and all reasons and on the other they rail against welfare mothers who live off the government by having child after child irresponsibly. They cater to illogical reactionaries and paranoid NRA types.
These right-wing Republican domestic terrorists incite violence in unstable people and that is why so many doctors and leaders from their ideological enemy’s lists are threatened and killed with guns or anthrax. For a political party that still insists Saddam was involved in 911 and that he had weapons of mass destruction what else do you expect? Until right-wingers address the issues honestly and stop all the lying and scare tactics they don’t deserve to be taken seriously. Otherwise they should be called what they are. Dare I say it? Ignorant and dishonest. 2nd letter below
Huckabee is doing nothing else but bashing Obama and, by extension, American foreign policy while on foreign soil. And that's quite obviously precisely how it's being perceived by the Israeli press.
But in branding what I wrote as "not just inaccurate -- it is a purposed lie," Huckabee doesn't even bother to address his Obama-bashing comments which I cited.
Huckabee doesn't even bother to address his Obama-bashing comments which I cited. Instead, he simply attributes the argument to "some in the left wing of the press" (an odd way to describe the conservative Jerusalem Post) and then assumes (correctly) that his followers will do the rest of the work: anything that doesn't come out of the collective mouth of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh is presumptively false.
The Republican base lives in its own alternative, (planet) or insular reality and any unpleasant or negative facts can be waved away not by refuting them, but by attributing them to the work of "the liberal media."
His denial is totally incoherent and substance-free -- it just tosses around the word "lie" and "left-wing press" without addressing any of the evidence I cited -- but in the warped right-wing cocoon he inhabits that is all that is necessary to dispense with facts. That's why roughly 30% of the country lives in its own world and possesses its own set of realities.
Criticizing American foreign policy while on Foreign Soil) which the Right has long insisted was a terrible sin:
Remember the Dixie Chicks in London or Al Gore in Saudi Arabia or Obama in Europe? They called all three of the above mentioned treasonous. How quickly the right forgets its patriotic principals. Why is no one on the right condemning Huckabee?
2nd letter
It’s so interesting to watch and listen to right-wing extremists at Town Hall meetings and those writing conspiracy theory op-eds with ridiculous references to Nazi’s these days. I noticed a crippled lady with a life threatening disease struggle to stand up talking about how she had been consistently denied insurance coverage by her private insurance company countless times and had exhausted her life savings. So many people that are fortunate enough to even have private insurance have also been dropped because of their condition and most can’t get private insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The tragedy of this story is that while the women struggles to stand with her crutches and tell her story another loud mouth tea bagger nut-case behind her a few rows back screams, her face distorted and ugly in it's anger, ignorance and selfishness, "I shouldn’t have to pay for your health care!" And these are normal, patriotic, "concerned" citizens?”
Tell me our present system is not a sick health care policy. It is what those who are against Obama’s plan want to continue. Doing nothing is not an option. These right-wing protesters are the ones lying, abusing disabled people, hanging people in effigy, destroying property, depicting Obama as Hitler and making death threats while ignoring essential medical needs of fellow citizens. These are the kinds of people Republicans are counting on to destroy Obama’s health care plans by lying to them and provoking them with fear mongering about death panels and forced euthanasia. Our present Medicare system doesn’t require that and the proposed system doesn’t either. Purposely lying about the proposed health care insurance system is sick and so is our political discourse today.
Republicans are in such disarray and have no constructive ideas on how to resolve the myriad of problems they created over the last eight years that their only recourse is to just try to destroy and obstruct any effort put forth by our President to resolve them. The ignorance by which they do this is astounding. The Democrats should stop trying to compromise with them and just create their own program. It is futile to try and work with a group that is dead set against any health care plan. One comment from a recent Republican critic said, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” as though he had no idea that Medicare was a government program. That ignorant view is much like driving cross country to protest the highway system. The heath care insurance and pharmaceutical industry are so desperate to derail the health care program they have resorted to the same scare tactics and lies they used in 92 and the 60’s against Medicare and Medicaid programs. It’s interesting to note that the administrative costs of private insurance companies are 20% while the administrative cost for Medicare is only 3%. Now, you tell me which one is more efficient and cost effective.
Not to be outdone by the health insurance industry, politicians like Sara Palin and other simple-minded Republicans have hysterically claimed that the government will force death panels and make euthanasia mandatory for the elderly and disabled. That is the most blatant lie perpetrated so far but the conspiracy theorists on the right fall for this kind of tactic every time. When you can’t win the debate on the facts just lie, demagogue and scare people that don’t know any better. They continuously do this on issues like abortion and the Presidents birth certificate. Anti-abortion extremists act as though abortion wasn’t even around until 1973, ignoring the fact that countless women were maimed and died from back-alley botched abortions for decades prior to 1973. That is why it was legalized in the first place. Another lie perpetrated by the right is that the government funds abortions. This is a blatant lie but it doesn’t keep right-wing zealot nutcases from repeating it ad infinitum. Are these the kind of people you want dictating to you and your doctor if you can use birth control pills or not? On the one hand they are against abortion for any and all reasons and on the other they rail against welfare mothers who live off the government by having child after child irresponsibly. They cater to illogical reactionaries and paranoid NRA types.
These right-wing Republican domestic terrorists incite violence in unstable people and that is why so many doctors and leaders from their ideological enemy’s lists are threatened and killed with guns or anthrax. For a political party that still insists Saddam was involved in 911 and that he had weapons of mass destruction what else do you expect? Until right-wingers address the issues honestly and stop all the lying and scare tactics they don’t deserve to be taken seriously. Otherwise they should be called what they are. Dare I say it? Ignorant and dishonest. 2nd letter below
Huckabee is doing nothing else but bashing Obama and, by extension, American foreign policy while on foreign soil. And that's quite obviously precisely how it's being perceived by the Israeli press.
But in branding what I wrote as "not just inaccurate -- it is a purposed lie," Huckabee doesn't even bother to address his Obama-bashing comments which I cited.
Huckabee doesn't even bother to address his Obama-bashing comments which I cited. Instead, he simply attributes the argument to "some in the left wing of the press" (an odd way to describe the conservative Jerusalem Post) and then assumes (correctly) that his followers will do the rest of the work: anything that doesn't come out of the collective mouth of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh is presumptively false.
The Republican base lives in its own alternative, (planet) or insular reality and any unpleasant or negative facts can be waved away not by refuting them, but by attributing them to the work of "the liberal media."
His denial is totally incoherent and substance-free -- it just tosses around the word "lie" and "left-wing press" without addressing any of the evidence I cited -- but in the warped right-wing cocoon he inhabits that is all that is necessary to dispense with facts. That's why roughly 30% of the country lives in its own world and possesses its own set of realities.
Criticizing American foreign policy while on Foreign Soil) which the Right has long insisted was a terrible sin:
Remember the Dixie Chicks in London or Al Gore in Saudi Arabia or Obama in Europe? They called all three of the above mentioned treasonous. How quickly the right forgets its patriotic principals. Why is no one on the right condemning Huckabee?
2nd letter
It’s so interesting to watch and listen to right-wing extremists at Town Hall meetings and those writing conspiracy theory op-eds with ridiculous references to Nazi’s these days. I noticed a crippled lady with a life threatening disease struggle to stand up talking about how she had been consistently denied insurance coverage by her private insurance company countless times and had exhausted her life savings. So many people that are fortunate enough to even have private insurance have also been dropped because of their condition and most can’t get private insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The tragedy of this story is that while the women struggles to stand with her crutches and tell her story another loud mouth tea bagger nut-case behind her a few rows back screams, her face distorted and ugly in it's anger, ignorance and selfishness, "I shouldn’t have to pay for your health care!" And these are normal, patriotic, "concerned" citizens?”
Tell me our present system is not a sick health care policy. It is what those who are against Obama’s plan want to continue. Doing nothing is not an option. These right-wing protesters are the ones lying, abusing disabled people, hanging people in effigy, destroying property, depicting Obama as Hitler and making death threats while ignoring essential medical needs of fellow citizens. These are the kinds of people Republicans are counting on to destroy Obama’s health care plans by lying to them and provoking them with fear mongering about death panels and forced euthanasia. Our present Medicare system doesn’t require that and the proposed system doesn’t either. Purposely lying about the proposed health care insurance system is sick and so is our political discourse today.
posted by T. Glenn Hall at 4:31 PM
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