Obama Care Astroturfing

The Left has grown so mixed up in its own deceit and self-delusion — as they try to distract from the substance of Obama Care’s open door to socialized medicine and government rationing — it’s hard to know where to begin. How about trying to drive the meme that citizen protests against Obama Care are overwhelmingly corporate “astroturfing” (a phony grassroots movement).

There are so many clear, pointed refutations I’ve come across that it seemed easier just to point them out to you here in a quick list format. If you can following the links, read all these and still continue to believe that the pro-liberty, anti-Obama Care crowd is guilty of “astroturfing” as much or more than the Left (show me the evidence), well, we won’t mistakenly call you an open-minded liberal anymore:

• Mary Katharine Ham debunks the myth about the Connecticut memo that served as the “smoking gun” centerpiece of the Left’s paranoid case — I love this quote: “MacGuffie describes himself as an ‘opponent of leftist thinking in America,’ and told me he’s ‘never pulled a lever’ for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.”
• Even Democrat Mickey Kaus concedes that “If an ‘astroturfing’ campaign gets real people to show up at events stating their real views, isn’t it … community organizing?”
• El Marco exposes the Left’s astroturfing at Nancy Pelosi’s recent Denver event (H/T Michelle Malkin)
• The People’s Press Collective similarly demonstrated the level of astroturfing at Saturday’s event with Congressman Ed Perlmutter
• Which side has posted hundreds of online ads seeking to pay people to support their position? Oh yeah, that would be the pro-Obama Care crowd
• I guess some will still persist in labeling people like those Ari Armstrong interviewed in Longmont or those in this YouTube video as part of the corporate, “right-wing mob”: without a single thought or idea of their own, but they would be diminishing their own credibility
• No one makes the point more brilliantly than Iowahawk with his usual top-quality satire

Anyone with an ounce of honesty and half a brain knows which side overwhelmingly leads the way in astroturfing the health care debate: it’s the pro-Obama Care, pro-socialized medicine crowd. Why? That’s open to more speculation, but I’ll posit that they must believe they desperately cannot afford to lose this debate — that their window of opportunity to implement this harmful government policy is closing, and that they won’t get this close again for a long time.

If it takes down the political career of some members of Congress who support this boondoggle, and if it limits the president’s political capital, so be it. And so much the better. But I’m more concerned about stopping the actual effects of the Obama Care plan that promises to drive millions out of their private health insurance, ultimately limit choices, and control health care costs only by vastly increasing rationing and subjecting it to the whims of bureaucrats and the political process. That’s why I continue to blog about this!

Contrary to the red herrings thrown out there by many, we’re not interested in defending the status quo — though Obama Care would be much worse. The system can and should be improved through a variety of free market, consumer-friendly health reforms. But given the current political realities, those aren’t on the table before Congress.

And, no, we don’t believe that Obama or Pelosi want to kill people. The problem the Left too often has is mistaking incentives for motives. In other words, rather than believing that their philosophical opponents might actually look at the real world and empirical data to judge the impact of a policy, they presume the Right’s opposition is fundamentally a questioning of their motives. There may be some who think that way, but they are the minority on our side of the aisle. I tend to believe the Left is overwhelmingly made up of the naive, misguided, and short-sighted. They just need to think a bit more clearly.

Example after example of the Left looking for distractions, pushing to shut down debate and hurry things along, and avoiding a serious discussion of the substance of the proposals before Congress.