Truth Does Not Matter In The Health Care "Debate"

from Confederate Yankee 08/07/09

I'm not sure there are too many places you can turn this morning without hearing about the confrontations that have broken out at several "town hall" meetings about health care reform yesterday.

An Obama supporter brazenly stepped forth to rip the sign out of a protester's hands in Denver.

Six people were arrested at the St. Louis event. A black man there was called a racial slur and assaulted severely enough by the mob that he required treatment in the emergency room at St. John's Mercy Medical Center. The injured man, Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative from St. Louis, was handing out Gadsden flags to the crowd when attacked.

At a similar event in Tampa, organizers apparently assaulted protesters in order to try to close the doors to a meeting there that the protesters were drowning out with chants. There were no arrests but the assault was captured on amateur video, and a series of photos shows a female supporter of Obamacare pushing the face of a protester. The woman and her husband has been tentatively identified as officers in a local Democratic organization.

In these events, organized union labor (SEIU) appears to have been brought in by Democratic organizers to fill the halls with supporters to provide the appearance of local support for the health care bill that liberal Democrats are attempting to force through the House of Representatives. In both events, conservative protesters that have been assaulted, apparently without provocation. Perhaps the unions were there to provide "muscle" as well.

And yet if you look to the media or the blogosphere or the government itself, you see a very well-coordinated message going out that "right wing mobs" are responsible for opposing a bill that a simple majority of the country opposes as the wrong solution to the problem.

There has always been gamesmanship, bias, and even flat-out lying in American politics, but I've been simply amazed at the messaging orchestration between the media, left-wing activist groups, liberal bloggers, and senior Democratic Party politicians all the way up to and including the Senate Majority Leader, Speaker of the House, and the President of the United States himself.

These socialists—let's call them what they are—are pushing hard for a version of health reform that a majority of Americans simple do not want. They are pushing for a complete gutting of our health care system, even though 74-percent of us rate our care as "good" or "excellent." They are pushing a plan that 50-percent of Americans believe will lead to a decline in the quality of their coverage, and that 78-percent know will lead to higher taxes on the middle class.

Democrats in Congress can pass this legislation without a single Republican vote, just as they did the stimulus bill. They hold a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate, and have a President itching to sign the nationalization of health care into law.

But the simple truth of the matter is that conservative and moderate Blue Dog Democrats know the stench of a rotten bill when they smell it. It is Blue Dog Democrats that have joined independents and Republicans in opposing a plan that the majority of the country does not expect to benefit anyone other than those who want to increase the size of government, and to insert the power of the government even further into your life.

The radical left wing of the Democratic Party, their activist groups and their adoring co-conspirators in the media seem to be doing everything in their power to demonize and shout down the majority of Americans unhappy with their scheming. They've resorted to slander. They've resorted to libel. They've lied unabashedly and outrageously. And now it seems they've resorted to physical thuggery in an attempt to silence their opposition.

I do not pretend to know how this is going to end, but the course that they are charting and precedent they are setting is not one that will likely end well.