Bring It On

6 Comments

1. 

   americanforliberty on October 12, 2009 at 11:58 am

   More fodder for the Public Option

   http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Insurers-mount-attack-against-apf-2590278815.html?x=0&sec=topStori
   es&pos=6&asset=&ccode=

   Insurance Company say that health care cost will increase in the Bacus Bill. So Insurance Companies are basically saying they need competition to keep costs down,no.

   Obama is up to 56% percent because the Republicans have no ideas.

   • 

     TarheelDem on October 12, 2009 at 12:33 pm

     Actually what AHIP is saying is “We paid for you; don’t vote it out of committee.”  Shot across the bows of the USS Baucus, USS Conrad, USS Carper, and USS Lincoln.

     The failure to vote it out of committee could be spun as failure of healthcare reform, just like it was in 1994.

     Interesting fact.  PriceWaterhouseCoopers did a similar last minute report for Big Tobacco when there was a bill in Congress to regulate tobacco in the FDA.

2. 

   Phil Perspective on October 12, 2009 at 1:24 pm

   You know what’s stupid(and yet funny at the same time)?  The GOP’ers have been trying to make every election(House member wise) about Pelosi since 2006?  I remember Sean Insanity doing his nightly “Keep the Republicans in the Majority .. otherwise that witch from San Francisco will become Speaker” bit .. why Republicans keep flogging a long dead horse … I don’t know … but it will work for them this time .. as good as it has done the last two elections … meaning it won’t work at all .. especially not with women

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     beltanevt on October 12, 2009 at 2:18 pm

     Nancy Pelosi is the mother of five kids and has who knows how many grandchildren. She has never to my knowledge done or said anything remotely crazy. In fact, she has to be one of the least scary political figures around. What is the message the GOP is trying to send, “Vote for us because Nancy Pelosi is a nice person”?

   • 

     colinski on October 12, 2009 at 4:20 pm

     Yes, they keep trying to demonize her, but it’s yet to resonate with people outside their base, which leads me to believe that the message has become so ‘narrow’ that most people don’t connect with it.

     There’s a general theme here, one I’ve written on lately. The rightwing/Republican message has become so radicalized that it’s removed from reality. There’s a disconnect with people who don’t share the pathology (i.e., authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, conventionalism).

     There is the unintended consequence to the use of the Overton Window.

     http://www.correntewire.com/the_overton_window_illustrated

     Continuous lambasting of liberals as “extremists” backfires at a certain point, when the message is no longer believable. The message itself is aimed at their core and fails to sway moderates and others. The need to keep ratcheting up the rhetoric in order to activate their base pushes the message out of the range of believability.

     There are limits to the ability to tar someone as “dangerously radical.” If there’s no alternative vision of normalcy to present in contrast to what/who  you’re attempting to demonize then the message doesn’t connect. The “paranoid style of American” politics loses its ability to terrorize and its adherents come off as mere paranoids. Negative campaigning still depresses the results of political opponents but there’s no positive reason to vote for the Republicans. And the reliance on activating the Republican base is problematic since it’s shrinking, as moderates are ejected and candidates are subjected to an ideological litmus test that is constraining the range of who fits into their notion of ideological purity.

3. 

   DaveW on October 12, 2009 at 2:21 pm

   Pelosi is no flaming leftie. If that were the issue they’d be trying to make Kucinich or Sanders or Boxer or somebody their “liberal” posterchild. She’s been an effective speaker, but not an innovator as far as introducing radical legislation goes. Picking on Pelosi makes sense only as a attempt to cash in on resentment of women succeeding at “man’s work”, and more indirectly at San Francisco as the capital of the “gay conspiracy to destroy my marriage”.

   Delightfully enough, if we do manage to get a pretty decent healthcare reform signed into law, she will be seen as a hero of that achievement because she stood strong against the subversives. So fire away, my Republican friends — you have nothing to lose but your viability.