Democrat Scare Tactics

The quick rollout of the Democrats fear machine against legitimate protests taking place across the nation in astounding numbers is not something to take lightly or underestimate. This new scare tactic of the Democrats in trying to paint those opposed to their rush job on health care as part of “an angry mob” and people “carrying swastikas” is an extremely devious way of first dehumanizing concerned citizens, then trivializing their legitimate concerns, and finally stripping them of their liberties and their rights to protest and speak out against government policies with which they do not agree.

This new scare tactic of the Democrats in trying to paint those opposed to their rush job on health care as part of “an angry mob” and people “carrying swastikas” is an extremely devious way of first dehumanizing concerned citizens, then trivializing their legitimate concerns, and finally stripping them of their liberties and their rights to protest and speak out against government policies with which they do not agree.

This is not just one or two fringe liberals in the Democrat party doing this. This is an obviously concerted effort straight from the top, as even Obama has gotten into the act by urging citizens to report to the government when they see their fellow citizens engaging in these protests. I am not making that up. The White House posted this on its web site:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Perhaps the email address should have been kgb@whitehouse.gov, because this outrageous request by the government asking citizens to rat out this sort of “subversive activity” is unprecedented and reminiscent of Communist Russia.

Starting at the top and working its way down, you can clearly see this organized scare tactic response to the public outrage over Congress’s legislative impudence.

In addition to the White House’s rat-out-your-neighbor KGB hotline, Obama himself sent out the following scare tactic email, as reported by Politico:

In an unusual e-mail appeal, President Barack Obama is asking millions of his campaign supporters to commit to attending at least one community event on health care this month.

Obama writes that opponents of his health care plan are “filling the airwaves and the Internet with outrageous falsehoods to scare people into opposing change.”

“And some people, not surprisingly, are getting pretty nervous,” he warns. “So we’ve got to get out there, fight lies with truth and set the record straight.”

The e-mail shows up as being from “President Barack Obama,” with the subject line: “This is the moment.”

Continuing on down the line, you see it employed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) when she had this exchange:

Reporter: Do you think there’s a legitimate grassroots movement going on here?

Pelosi: I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.

You also see it employed by prominent Democrat senators, such as Idiot Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who had this to say on MSNBC’s “Hardball”:

I saw some of the clips of people storming these town hall meetings. The last time I saw well-dressed people doing this was when Al Gore asked me to go down to Florida when they were recounting the ballots, and I was confronted with the same type of people. They were there screaming and yelling, “Go back to California,” “Get out of here,” and all the rest of it–until I finally looked at them and I said, “You know what? Your hero Ronald Reagan is from California. You should show a little respect.” And then they quieted down.

So this is just all organized. Just go up on the Web site, Chris. You in the media have to take a look at what’s going on here. This is all planned. It’s to hurt our president, and it’s to change the Congress.

And, of course, you see it employed right in the belly of the beast, the DNC, who put out a television ad with the following script:

Narrator: The right-wing extremist Republican base is back.

Birther crackpot at town meeting: He is not an American citizen!

Narrator: They lost the election. They lost on the Recovery Act, the budget and children’s health care. They’ve lost the confidence of the American people after eight years of failed policies that ruined our economy and cost millions of jobs.

Now, desperate Republicans and their well-funded allies are organizing angry mobs, just like they did during the election. Their goal? Destroy President Obama, and stop the change Americans voted for overwhelmingly in November.

Unidentified voice of Sen. Jim DeMint: It will break him.

Unidentified voice of Rush Limbaugh: I hope he fails.

Narrator: This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives. They have no plan for moving our country forward, so they’ve called out the mob.

Same birther crackpot at same town meeting: And I want to know, why are you people ignoring his birth certificate?

Narrator, as phone number of GOP Washington headquarters appears onscreen: Call the Republican Party. Tell them you’ve had enough of the mob.

As James Taranto, of the WSJ’s Best of the Web Today points out:

The ad does not identify the congressman whose town meeting was disrupted by the birther crackpot. It was Rep. Michael Castle of Delaware, a Republican. So the DNC expects us to believe that the RNC has “called out the mob” against its own members! Oh, and in fairness to the crackpot, we should note that she holds a tiny American flag and does not appear to display any swastikas or “symbols like that.”

Taranto sums it up nicely when he writes:

So, let’s review the arguments:

• Republicans are bad, they lost the last election, and they have partisan motives for wanting to stop ObamaCare.
• People who are angry about this are crackpots who display swastikas and other invidious symbols. Also, their anger is insincere, and they are shills of the RNC. They wear nice clothes, and this is not to their credit.
• Some of the arguments against ObamaCare are false, according to Obama.
• If ObamaCare is defeated, Obama would be hurt.

Is there any argument for ObamaCare? In all the material we reviewed for this item, only this, from the Obama email:

Every day we don’t act, Americans watch their premiums rise three times faster than wages, small businesses and families are pushed towards bankruptcy, and 14,000 people lose their coverage entirely. The cost of inaction is simply too much for the people of this nation to bear.

In other words, the “crisis” is so urgent that any thoughtful deliberation would entail intolerable delay. This is the same old argument that has already failed.

If this is the best the president can do, he deserves to lose resoundingly. If that hurts him, there’s always aspirin.

Tags: Barbara Boxer, Congress, Democrats, DNC, Health care, James Taranto, Nancy Pelosi, Obama

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 and is filed under Featured, National Politics, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.