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Expose the Right and we win health care |
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Health Care for America Now held a retreat last week. Via Greg Sargent at TPM:
I’m told that dozens of the heaviest hitters from the health care reform world met for a private retreat in Virginia last week and spent two days girding for a major battle with the insurance industry, hashing out specific messaging, discussing organizing goals and planning a major fundraising drive to blanket the airwaves with ads next year.
At the retreat — which was organized by Health Care For America Now, the major umbrella group of unions, reform advocates and providers — the group agreed that they were aiming to start next year with at least $25 million for ads and field organizing, with the hope of raising many millions more.
Lots of elements of health care reform and how to win were discussed, but one of the most important was taking on the opposition. Specifically, if we want to win health care reform, we have to not only prove the insurance industry and the right-wing of this country wrong, we have to make them untrustworthy.
Case in point, as I wrote yesterday, conservatives and the industry will use all their resources to “kill” health care reform to preserve their own interests:
As this debate moves forward, keep a close eye on who’s making arguments. If it’s the insurance or pharmaceutical industry, you can bet their argument helps or protects their bottom line. If it’s conservatives, you can bet it helps their political viability. Don’t ever assume these groups have the public’s interest at heart.
Having arguments is one thing, and yes, reasonable people can disagree on issues like health care. But it’s important that the general public understand who’s pushing arguments like “We can’t afford health care in an economic crisis” or “big government health care is not the solution we need” and why they are pushing those arguments. As conservatives are making clear, they aren’t against health care for ideological reasons so much as for partisan reasons:
Amidst the usual scary phrases like “government takeover,” “Marxist,” and “Obamacare” (what does that even mean?), Pethokoukis comes clean about his real problem with health care reform - people will like it and they’ll like Obama for making it happen. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute agrees. His message to Republican lawmakers: Blocking Obama’s Health Plan Is Key to the GOP’s Survival.
The country needs to understand why the right-wing is against health care reform. You can help make that happen.
SEIU has put together an online letter writing tool for folks to write letters to the editor to their local paper. All you have to do is input your zip code and write a letter and it will be automatically submitted to all the local papers in your area.
So, please take a moment and write a letter to your local papers. Expose the reasons why conservatives oppose health care reform. Make their arguments untrustworthy. That way, we’ll be able to win quality, affordable health care for all in 2009.
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
I’ll give you this one because everyone seems to miss it…
The republican base is a mixture of economic conservatives and christian conservatives. One half votes based on the false belief that republicans will keep the government out of their back yards and away from their pockets. The other half bases their republicanism almost solely upon the false association of the right wing with what they, incorrectly, believe are “christian values.”
Christ’s teachings invariably come back to providing for the poor, caring for your fellow man, loving your neighbor, etc. If you phrase it right — if you don’t sound like you’re calling them hypocrites, but calling them to action in the name of God — you should be able to bring a chunk of the conservative base to your side with a few well-placed Jesus-quotes.
I’m thinking, “Then shall [the Lord] say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.” Matthew 25:41-43
Or the parable Jesus tells of the good Samaritan at Luke 10:25-37 wherein a priest and a Levite carelessly pass by a man at roadside who has been wounded by thieves. But a passing Samaritan comes to his aid, binds his wounds, takes him to a nearby inn, and promises the innkeeper that he will pay all the wounded man’s expenses if the innkeeper will care for him in the Samaritan’s stead. After telling this parable Jesus asks those around him, “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” They answer “He that shewed mercy on him.” To which Jesus teaches, “Go, and do thou likewise.”
There are tens if not hundreds more instances of Christ pointing his followers to selfless concern and unconditional love for his fellow man throughout the gospels. It is a Christian imperative to perform alms. It is a Christian imperative to remand riches unto the poor. It is a Christian imperative to care for the sick and injured. And it is a Christian imperative to do all these things with complete disregard for your own welfare. (or in other words, to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”)
I’m sure you can find a way to work this into your message, at least those messages delivered to conservative audiences. Eighty percent of America claims a Christian affiliation of some kind. Hence I cannot understand how we don’t already have a Universal Health Care system in place, neither why selling one to America proves so untenable, nor why I have never heard an argument made in the public arena on the basis of Christ’s irreproachably clear and explicit teachings.
Your audience espouses Christianity… Well, Christians are called by the Word, the Light, the Way, the Son of Man, and the Lamb of God to be socialists. Play your hand: Either Christian’s the world over repent and do the bidding of their Lord or God emerges from the constellation Orion, ridden on a flaming chariot to slay the false-believers, destroy the vain workings of mankind, and raise up a new and perfect world in place of those who wrought iniquity.
Cut and dry.
Faith outreach is going to be key to winning this, no question. And the rhetoric is there. Let’s hope we can get them to listen.
The Bible absolutely calls followers of Christ to taking care of the poor, the sick, the widow, the lame, etc. Where thoughtful conservative Christians would differ from you is in where that responsibility lies. Does it lie with the government or with the individual believer? They would see an answer to Christ’s calling in the collection plate that funds a homeless shelter and a free clinic, not in the tax system that provides government-based health care.
I happen to agree with you, and think a Christ-like society looks a lot more like socialism than what we have right now. But we’re never going to convince conservative Christians of that. The best way to get them on our side for things like health care reform is not to throw Scripture at them (they know full well all those passages you quoted), but to appeal to them in an economic sense - to convince them that this is what makes best financial sense for our country and for their wallets. It sounds contradictory, but trust me, it’s what works.
Conceded: That sounds like a standpoint the so-called Christian-right would take. Of course, if we could speak to them rationally, one would certainly like to point out the hypocrisy in attempting to legislate Biblical edict when it concerns gay marriage, reproductive rights, and school prayer, while expecting the same government “of the people” to wash its hands of the poor.
Especially in light of the justification Christians tend to throw out for falling in step to the drum of war: (and not viewing returning soldiers as heathen murderers) That this government is ordained by God and so, according to that “least of all apostles,” Paul, when governments ordained by God wage wars they surely must be godly wars! The argument therefore being, if this government is ordained by God what exempts God’s nations from God’s calls to charity? Though one presumes the answer would come of the same corrupt logic that exempts God’s nations from the many commandments not to kill folk.
…Antiquated, self-justifying, workers of iniquity…
I take one point of contention with what you’ve said though, and that is this notion that Christians know the teachings of Christ.
At least three out of five Christians I meet can’t tell you so much as a single parable of the rabbi they call God. They only know how to ask people, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior.” What few bits of scripture they do know tend to be excerpts from the Torah and / or outright sacrilegeous interpretations of text which allow them to worship God and Mammon simultaneously and guilt-free. (See above.)
Rambling… Ignore me.
Well, I’d like to think the members of my church are better educated about the Bible, or I need to find a new calling.
Seriously, though, I think it’s best just to leave religion out of the conversation as much as possible when dealing with conservative Christians. True, they are full of hypocrisies, but they are also completely inflexible on matters of faith. Where they can be moved is on practical matters that affect their wallets and the well-being of their own children.
Oh, don’t get me started on people with wallets and children! Enjoy your Thanksgiving.