"A Method to Their Madness" The Nation

[amborin]

/snip

"progressives could be forgiven for branding the right as stupid and crazy. But they would also be wrong. For if this is madness, there is great method in it. It is well organized and well funded. It has proven effective in mobilizing support, creating "controversy" where little exists and disrupting and disorienting whatever national conversation there is.

/snip

But stupid and crazy--anything but. It takes considerable skill to convince people that something that is clearly good for them--like universal healthcare--is not. If the right is crazy, it is crazy like a Fox News presenter.

/snip

There are three important points to acknowledge about people like Gladney. First, they are not new. The cold war in general and McCarthyism in particular was built on lies, misinformation, obsession and guilt by the most tenuous of associations. After Eisenhower defeated Taft at the 1952 GOP convention, a woman emerged insisting, "This means eight more years of socialism." In the late 1940s, a chairman of a federal loyalty review board conceded, "Of course, the fact that a person believes in racial equality doesn't prove that he's a communist. But it certainly makes you look twice, doesn't it?

/snip

Second, you can't argue with them. A good two and a half weeks after failed rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina left bodies floating in the streets and people abandoned on roofs, 35 percent of the country believed that George W. Bush had done a good or excellent job responding to the crisis.

/snip

Third, we can beat them.

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Less than a third of the country believes Obama has clearly explained his plans for healthcare reform. Two-thirds of independents and more than a third of Democrats believe he hasn't. According to a CNN poll, only one in five believes he or she will be better off after healthcare reform has passed, and 40 percent say they are confused by the proposals. Who can blame them?

A decisive portion of the country is desperate to be convinced. They know that what they have now is terrible but have yet to be convinced that what might come is better. How could it be otherwise when the very person who launched the reform process--the president--keeps hedging on its most essential element: the public option? The only thing that is controversial about universal healthcare is that America does not have it. The idea that a Democratic president with substantial Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress might fail to pass healthcare reform, well, that's enough to make anyone..."

/snip

<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090928/younge<

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Two comments

There is without a doubt a method to their madness. The most fundamental key to implementing the madness is concentrated ownership of radio, newspaper and television/cable media. The platforms from which the propaganda is launched are hiding in plain sight.

Secondly, it is quite possible that President Obama keeps publicly supporting the public option knowing that there is very good chance he will never see a bill on his desk with a workable PO plan in it. While that sentiment is by no means a certainty, it does explain the odd trajectory this debate has taken since the President took office.