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Hey Luntz Parrots - What’s Your Plan? |
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The Frank Luntz memo outlining for conservatives the empty rhetoric they should use to kill health care reform is making the rounds. In just a few days, Republican Members of Congress can be seen parroting exactly what Luntz has written in the halls of Congress, on television, and in meetings with reporters.
Think Progress is documenting the right-wing automatons. Watch the video:
I have just one question for these elected officials: What’s your health care plan?
The answer: They don’t have one. The GOP has no health care plan.
They can blather about the “patient-doctor relationship” all they want, ignoring the fact that the health reform proposals put forward would allow people to keep the health care they have if they want. But they can’t scare the American people this time. As Richard Kirsch points out:
The attack on government health care falls flat when confronted by the everyday experience of Americans with private health insurance. As New York Senator Charles Schumer said on Tuesday at the Senate Finance Committee roundtable, “Well, let me tell you, the American people have some problems with the government. But they have a lot more problems with private insurers.”
And so, conservatives repeating a pollster’s talking points without any alternative to our health care crisis will be labeled obstructionists and relegated to the background of this debate. They understand this, to a point. They will follow Luntz’s advice and say they recognize the health care crisis and are for reform. But in the absence of a health care plan of they’re own, they are lying.
Of course, as Luntz admits, the point of his memo is not to push alternative solutions but simply block change:
“You’re not going to get what you want, but you can kill what they’re trying to do.”
Conservatives are simply trying to kill health care reform. They do not care that the American people are suffering. They do not care that the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills. And they do not care when private insurers make decisions for you and your doctor to save another dollar and make their stock rise a quarter of a point. How do I know they don’t care? Because they are not producing an alternative to fix the crisis.
Conservatives have no health care plan. They have no ideas. They are simply shouting, “No!” This time, we won’t listen.
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
Conservatives have priciples that are differnet from the Social Democrat Party. Conservatives believe in individual liberties and abilities. Social Democrats believe in group rights and government determined liberties and choices. You either beleive in free enterprise and liberty as set out in the Declartion of Independence and the Constitution or you believe in European Socialism and some watered down version of the old USSR. What free speech, press, religion, individual rights do you have Rusia, Cuba, or any of the other socialist countries? Social Democrats are giving up their individual rights to the government.