| highwaystar101 said: That woman was a whole load of crazy. I mean Obama is not directly linked to the genocide of 12 million people, I would be extremely insulted if someone compared me to Hitler in any way... especially one as tenuous as this. -edit- This thread has reminded me of how the republicans who are anti-healthcare really are drawing on strawman arguements to win this debate at this point. It's actually really kinda sad, I have a lot of respect for the few free thinking republicans who are for it or are willing to debate real reasons for a better reform. |
Well, its not just the Republicans who are avoiding a "Straight-Up" debate on healthcare reform ...
Part of the problem that the Democrats now face is that they have a massive bill which is (nearly) impossible to explain, is full of clauses which can be interpreted in many ways, at a time when they have erased most of the trust voters had with them, and the party has several people in positions of influence who have written (mostly academic) arguments which are out of step with the beliefs of average Americans. The people who are opposed to this plan don't have to try particularly hard to make this reform look dangerously bad, and the implications presented by opponents can easily be converted into unrealistic claims about what the bill is really about.
The Democrats have responded by attacking their opponents through mocking and minimizing them ("Teabaggers" comes to mind) or by portraying them as militant racists; and they have gotten a lot of help from certain "Friends" in the media, even to the extent of MSNBC portraying a black man who carried an assult rifle to a town hall protest as being a racist who objects to the Obama presidency.
Now, the thing I have noticed with the strategy the Democrats are taking is that it is backfiring on them and their supporters from the media as more moderate opponents (or people who just want to see this debated and well understood before it is voted on) are insulted by their generalizations about the protesters. Whether you agree with the numbers represented by Rasmussen reports, the longer this debate goes on the less support people show for the reform, the lower people's approval of the president becomes, and the higher the Republican's are favoured in the generic congressional ballot; and I suspect a large portion of that comes from the Democrats insulting independants and conservatives Democrats in a way to push this bill forward.
