In the health care non-debate, Republicans, astroturf lobbyists, and corporations are dominating what some are laughably calling "the conversation." I put that in quotes, because if you can call one side trying to talk while the other shouts, "Shut up! shut up!" a "conversation," you have less respect for language than I do. What the right is doing in this non-debate -- as I've pointed out before (and later had confirmed) -- is playing an aggressive defense. If this was an actual debate, the talking points wingnuts got before they went to town halls would include phrases like, "What we ought to do is..." and "It seems to me it'd make more sense if we..." As it is, we've got people worried that Obama's going to kill Sarah Palin's baby and Stephen Hawking. No one's talking about alternatives because no one on the right is interested in alternatives. They like things fine just the way they are. Insurance companies are making incredible amounts of money, while having to provide less coverage. What's not to love?People are buying the "death panel" idea, insane and stupid as it is, because it fits the stereotype that the right has created for liberals over the years. Liberals are, after all, bloodthirsty monsters who are so selfish that they want to kill babies in the womb for the sake of convenience. Decade after decade, the right has painted those on the left as people with no regard for human life (never mind Bush's wars) and what we're seeing now is the culmination of that messaging. It works because the right has spent years teaching a gullible audience to believe it.
What Democrats could do is counter the stereotype-fitting lies with our own stereotypes. But this would require a left wing media as eager to lie as the right wing media. And we just don't have people as skilled in fiction-based politics as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, WorldNetDaily, Drudge Report, Washington Times, Lou Dobbs, Laura Ingraham, FOX News, Ann Coulter, Dick Morris, Jerome Corsi, Mark Levin, or Newt Gingrich. That's the short list.
I volunteer to step in and lie my lying ass off about what Republicans want out of health care reform. I'll do it. Here are your stereotype-appropriate talking points:... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
