Republicans defend health care status quo, offer no improvements

Steve Benen reports on a partisan Republican memo that explains their strategy for defeating the health care initiative. Here's what they plan to do as a party. It has three major parts:

1. They will defend the status quo. They will push the assertion that the current health care system isn't as bad as it is being painted.


2. They will heavily use frightening words and phrases. Obama's plan for health care is
   • an "experiment"
   • a "risk"
   • could "bankrupt the country"
   • "dangerously" "change the doctor-patient relationship."
   Note the total absence of explanation of how these things could happen. Note also that they will be presented without connecting any of them to the current disaster that is America's exploitable lack of a health care system. Items # 1 and #2 will not be presented in the same paragraph because they don't want the two sets of ideas connected.


3. They will take every possible action to delay the forward movement of the legislation to provide greater opportunities to kill it. This is from the memo itself.

   "The Republican National Committee will engage in every activity we can to slow down this mad rush while promoting sensible alternatives that address health care costs and preserve quality," the memo affirmatively declares.

This process is no surprise. It is what the Republicans and conservatives have been doing for over 60 years to stave off a system of national health care financing that would limit their chanced to exploit vulnerable sick people and get rich.

As long as the conservatives can raise enough money from the superwealthy to keep funding the conservative think tanks, keep pumping out the propaganda, to elect their own politicians and to buy off the top leaders of out-of-the-mainstream evangelical churches and keep them politicized, they will continue these anti-social tactics.