This is, in part, a response to this article:
Enjoy.
It was good to hear one thing, though:
"...they're studying the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, they're reading history and case law, they're showing up at rallies and meetings, and a slew of conservative candidates are throwing their hats into the ring."
It's about time they started educating themselves on the very document we pay them to uphold.
Mr. Hubbell claims Barack Obama's efforts to nationalize health care "have been met with fierce resistance." Of course it has! Because the right wing slanders it as a "government takeover," they say your beloved grandmother will be murdered by "death panels," it will plunge the country further into debt and I swear I heard Bill O'Reilly say there is an amendment hidden in there about legalizing the clubbing of baby seals. But I digress.
However, when Americans are asked whether they support healthcare reform when it described fairly and without biased, guess what? Most do. People don't support the bill because of very clever and very effective misinformation by conservatives. The New York Times' David Brooks had a wonderful piece to describe this:
Let’s say we had a year-long debate in the run-up to the Iraq war. Let’s say at the end of that debate, 33 percent of Americans thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq, 46 percent thought it was a bad idea and the rest weren’t sure. Then let’s say that there were a bunch of elections in places like New Jersey and Virginia in the middle of this debate and George Bush’s party lost them all badly. Let’s say at the end of this debate there was a senate race in Wyoming in which a Democratic candidate made preventing the war a central plank in his campaign. Let’s say Bush went out to Wyoming and told voters they had to support the Republican to save the Iraq invasion. And let’s say the Democrat still went on to win that Wyoming Senate seat by more than 5 percentage points.
Would you have advised George Bush under these circumstances to go ahead and invade Iraq? [...] Or would you have said, George, I know you really want to invade Iraq. I know you think an invasion will do a lot of good for the world. But the American people are pretty clear about this issue. Maybe you should show a little doubt. Maybe you ought to listen and give this whole thing a second look.
I think the analogy here is obvious. For those of you that still don't get it, substitute healthcare for Iraq War and Massachusetts for Wyoming. There's a problem with this analogy. Lets say we had this debate over the Iraq invasion, and there were genuine differences in opinion. However, one side was mostly telling the truth and the other side was mostly confusing the public and telling lies. At the end of the debate, opinion polls reflected that the side telling lies had convinced a majority of the public, and we invaded Iraq.
Oh wait. That actually happened.
And we know how that turned out.
The Bush administration told some doozies to get us into Iraq. The administration was pitching the existence of the dreaded WMDs and Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda, both of which have been proven false. So, the NYT's piece above is ironic. Once again, one side has told a lot of lies to help alter the course of public opinion. Those lies have had an impact, according to a Pew poll (poll). Among those opposed to the health care bill, majorities think that their choice of doctors would be impaired, their out of pocket costs would go up, their wait times would increase, and the quality of their care would suffer. Meanwhile, only 27% of Americans opposed to the health care bill, and only 39% overall, believe that their ability to get coverage would improve if they had a pre-existing condition.
If that's what people believe, then it's amazing that healthcare even has 40% support. I don't mean to say there aren't legitimate reasons to oppose the bill. It reduces Medicaid spending. It contains a small mandate that might be a bad deal for some people, the excise tax or the millionaire's tax for example. Nevertheless, polls have consistently shown that support for the healthcare program increases dramatically, when you provide people with a neutral and accurate description of what the legislation actually contains (Essence of Health Care Engame).
What's the next conservative argument? Oh yes, the "TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy." Perhaps people have forgotten who signed the TARP and stimulus legislation. Your boy, Dubya. That being said, I believe TARP and stimulus were the right thing to do. (In the interest of full disclosure, I do work for Citigroup which accepted $45 billion of TARP, repaid $20 billion with interest, and asked the government to convert the remaining $25 billion into preferred shares of stock. Before you get too angry, taxpayers, your shares are currently worth $30.5 billion.) If you think the recession was bad, how about another depression? You think 10% unemployment is bad? Try 20%. What would you have rather done? Let the banks fail? That's exactly what happened before the Great Depression. I believe the problem to focus on is the "too big to fail" aspect certain banks have. I also whole-heartedly disagreed with the auto bailout as it was a regional issue and not of national or global consequence. Of course, all of these arguments are based on predictions of what would have happened, but I think it's safe to say that without TARP or the stimulus the economy would be worse off. I'm not claiming that Barack Obama is the next FDR, but he and Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner took us back from the brink, I think its important that you realize that. I'll even throw in Hank Paulson - he was put in an impossible position and handled is as best he could.
What did the Republicans want instead of healthcare? They thought we should focus on jobs. So, Washington passed a jobs bill. There are more in the works. This was hailed as a bipartisan bill to help stimulate job growth! Bipartisanship still exists! Do you know how many Republicans voted for the bill? 11. There are 41 non-Dems in the Senate. This speaks volumes on the definition of bipartisan in Washington.
The next argument is the use of reconciliation to push the bill through. While I cannot say I'm completely for the use of reconciliation, if the minority party would realize that it's the minority party, liberals wouldn't need to use parliamentary maneuvers to achieve their goals. Instead, Biden got nuclear on you. Not to mention, the conservatives are famous for using the exact same procedure. The most recent of which was Bush's tax bills. So, thanks for the tip, guys.
To speak more broadly, conservatives and Tea Party activists, Mr. Hubbell included, like to use the rhetoric of an upcoming "revolution."
I sincerely hope the "revolution" that Mr. Hubbell speaks of is a metaphor. This is not 1776, in which representation is blocked by a distant power. Those who take the revolutionary metaphor too literally, such as Mr. Hubbell, are not engaged in politics, they are engaged in sedition. The Obama administration proposes to expand government; it is not preparing to overthrow the government. As I said earlier, the Federal Reserve just helped to prevent a depression by increasing the money supply. It deserves a little thanks.
Every political movement is threatened by the impatient and irresponsible. William Lloyd Garrison called for the secession of the North to avoid the contaminating evil of slavery, while Lincoln worked to preserve the union. Malcolm X initially found the American tradition corrupt, while the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. found vast resources of reform within that tradition. The heroes of America are heroes of unity.
Our political system is designed for vigorous disagreement. It is not designed for irreconcilable contempt. Such contempt loosens the ties of citizenship and undermines the idea of patriotism. "How can we love our country," asked Ronald Reagan, "and not love our countrymen?"
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