The Secret Effort to Kill Health Care Reform (Rolling Stone Obtains Docs-Rt Wing Coordinating Mobs)

[kpete]

September 29, 2009

The Secret Effort to Kill Health Care Reform
According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, right wing groups have been coordinating "in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings."

"Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry. Call it the return of the Karl Rove playbook: The effort to mobilize the angriest fringe of the Republican base was guided by a conservative dream team that included the same GOP henchmen who Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, smeared John McCain in 2000, wrote the script for Republican obstructionism on global warming, and harpooned the health care reform effort led by Hillary Clinton in 1993."
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/09/29/the_secret_effort_to_kill_health_care_reform.html

...........


The Lie Machine
GOP operatives are running a secret campaign to kill health care reform, and it's based on Karl Rove's old playbook

TIM DICKINSONPosted Sep 23, 2009 9:01 AM


On the first day of August, a mob of 200 right-wing Texans stormed the parking lot of a Randalls grocery store in southwest Austin. They were united in a single goal: Disrupt the "office hours" that Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the district's congressman, had scheduled for his constituents. The protesters targeted Doggett for his role in crafting the House's bill to reform health care, brandishing signs that read "No Government Health Care" and "No Government Counselor in My Home!!!" But their anger seemed to encompass a universe of conservative fears: higher taxes, illegal immigration, socialism. The threat of violence was thinly veiled: One agitator held aloft a tombstone with the name Doggett. Screaming, "Just say no!" the mob chased Doggett through the parking lot to an aide's car — roaring with approval as he fled the scene.

Conservatives were quick to insist that the near-riot — the first of many town-hall mobs that would dominate the headlines in August — was completely spontaneous. The protesters didn't show up "because of some organized group," Rick Scott, the head of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, told reporters. "They're mad about the stimulus bill, the bailout, the economy. Now they see that their health care is about to be taken over by the government."

In fact, Scott's own group had played an integral role in mobilizing the protesters. According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients' Rights had been working closely for weeks as a "coalition partner" with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings just like Doggett's. Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry. Call it the return of the Karl Rove playbook: The effort to mobilize the angriest fringe of the Republican base was guided by a conservative dream team that included the same GOP henchmen who Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, smeared John McCain in 2000, wrote the script for Republican obstructionism on global warming, and harpooned the health care reform effort led by Hillary Clinton in 1993.

"The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform," says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. "I'm certain that people showing up at these town halls feel that they're there on their own — but they don't realize they're being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry and the other special interests."

more:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30219673/the_lie_machine

[av8rdave]

1. Would love to see this get wider circulation!

[MetaTrope]

32. We'll be hearing about this on all the talking head shows!

Right.

[xultar]

2. Wait. You mean that Repugs had something to do with Hillary's healthcare

going down in flames?

You don't say...I'd have never guessed that reading DU.

[wroberts189]

3. Top HC lobbiest admitted they had sent out 50k people to these "town halls" knr.

[fascisthunter]

4. some days I think about the past I've come from...

and how liars were always eventually outed in the circles I had come into contact with. Those who were outed would be met with contempt and overall shame from others. Some even got their asses kicked, depending on the weight of their lies.

These dicks are lucky the same thing doesn't happen to them yet, but I feel as people get angrier and find out the truth more, it will catch up to them.

One thing the right wing underestimates, is the will of all others... when their livelihoods are fucked with, as the right wing intentionally does, there will be hell to pay.

[seafan]

5. But, but, Claire McCaskill sputters in protest at this whole notion.

McCaskill: 'It's a huge mistake to suggest that people against health care reform are manufactured.', August 12, 2009



The Lie Machine, by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone, September 23, 2009

.....

According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients' Rights had been working closely for weeks as a "coalition partner" with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings just like Doggett's. Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry. Call it the return of the Karl Rove playbook: The effort to mobilize the angriest fringe of the Republican base was guided by a conservative dream team that included the same GOP henchmen who Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, smeared John McCain in 2000, wrote the script for Republican obstructionism on global warming, and harpooned the health care reform effort led by Hillary Clinton in 1993.

"The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform," says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. "I'm certain that people showing up at these town halls feel that they're there on their own — but they don't realize they're being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry and the other special interests."

Behind the scenes, top Republicans — including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Minority Leader John Boehner and the chairman of the GOP's Senate steering committee, Jim DeMint — worked hand-in-glove with the organizers of the town brawls. Their goal was not only to block health care reform but to bankrupt President Obama's political capital before he could move on to other key items on his agenda, including curbing climate change and expanding labor rights. As DeMint told an August teleconference of nearly 20,000 town-hall activists, "If we can stop him on this, the administration won't be able to go on to cap and trade, card check and the other things they want to do."

The campaign to mobilize the town-hall mobs began with a script written by the right's foremost fearmonger, Frank Luntz. Luntz rose to fame in 1994 as pollster for Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, and crafted the Republican playbook on global warming. In a May memo, Luntz outlined a battle plan for conservatives to block what he branded the "Washington takeover" of health care — the most terrifying buzz words conjured up in his polls and focus groups.
The logic of the language is simple, Luntz writes: "Takeovers are like coups — they both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom." For a third of all Americans, he adds, the top worry about health care reform is "being denied a procedure or medication because a Washington bureaucrat says no." Luntz concludes by telling Republicans how best to play the fear card. "It is essential that 'deny' and 'denial' enter the conservative lexicon immediately," he writes, "because it is at the core of what scares Americans most about a government takeover of health care."

Distributed widely to Republicans on Capitol Hill, the memo framed the right-wing attack on health care reform. What Luntz describes as "the best anti-Democrat message" is by now familiar to everyone in America: "No Washington bureaucrat should stand between your family and your doctor... The Democrats want to put Washington politicians in charge of your health care."

.....

Hope Senator McCaskill has an opportunity to sit down and read this piece, if she can find the time.


Some of these elected officials are woefully uninformed to be called "US Senator".



Get back to us, Senator McCaskill, when you've done your homework.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

23. Get back to us Sen. McCaskill when you decide to be a Democrat. n/t

[Sherman A1]

48. Agreed

Claire has been a big disappointment from my point of view.

[redqueen]

6. "they don't realize they're being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry

and the other special interests"

Sad. I hope they're pissed at how they got played, but I doubt it.

[kpete]

7. MORE:

Smoking Gun
We all knew McCaughey was a paid liar, but not a tobacco-funded paid liar. James Fallows has a bit more. This will be a great angle for the media to ignore the next time they invite McCaughey on one of their shows to tell us what's "really" in the health care bill.
more:

Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone has a huge scoop - 15 years too late, but still a huge scoop - that again shows the capture of our government by corporate interests. It turns out that Betsy McCaughey, the wingnut noise machine creation, was actually a creation of - get this - Philip Morris:
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/09/ok_info_about_b_mccaughey_that.php

During the debate over Clinton's health care overhaul in the early 1990s, McCaughey — then an academic at the right-wing Manhattan Institute — wrote an article for The New Republic called "No Exit," in which she claimed that Hillarycare would prevent even wealthy Americans from "going outside the system to purchase basic health coverage you think is better." Even though the bill plainly stated that "nothing in this Act" would prohibit consumers from purchasing additional care, McCaughey's claim was echoed endlessly in the press, with each repetition pounding a stake further into the heart of the reform effort.

McCaughey's lies were later debunked in a 1995 post-mortem in The Atlantic, and The New Republic recanted the piece in 2006. But what has not been reported until now is that McCaughey's writing was influenced by Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaignto scuttle Clinton's health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company's strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to "work on the development of favorable pieces" with "friendly contacts in the media." The memo, prepared by a Philip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:

"Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/smoking-gun-by-dday-tim-dickinson-of.html

[Doremus]

33. Is this the Betsy McCaughey of "death panel" fame?

[Solly Mack]

8. k/r

[peacetalksforall]

9. Everyone ... read the Rolling Stone article - it puts pieces of what we've heard

all together and educatead me on even more.

This is a good article to use to diagram the enemy of improvement in this country. Those shouters want what we want for the most part, but their orchestrors are hell bent on clouding their mind about who the enemy is. To the point that we are becoming a very unsafe country.

[hootinholler]

10. I would love to get copies of the checks

That these grass roots were fertilized with.

-Hoot

[gratuitous]

11. Never mind that!

We've got another in-depth exposé on how George Soros is using secret Swiss bank account, cut-out corporations, and Vulcan mind-meld techniques to turn out millions of anti-war protestors. Now, not all the blanks are filled in, but here's what we have so far:

1. George Soros is pretty rich for a socialist.
2. Missing connection.
3. Lots of people are upset with the way Republicans misruled the country.

Oh, and ANSWER and ACORN are involved somehow, too. And everyone knows they're subversive organizations that try to convince poor people that they have a voice in running the country, which is just plain liberal socialist fascism with communistic overtones.

Also.

[tsuki]

12. Here's that lying Luntz memo on how to gin up the Hatriots.

http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/30234884/inside_the_lie_machine_documents

I watched his performance on CNN. He is a hateful, lying POS.

[d_r]

51. That is something right there

This how-to manual is a fascinating insight into how propaganda movements are put in to place in the modern age.

[Stand and Fight]

13. Think I know what I am reading with my lunch today! Thanks! n/t

[chatnoir]

14. And the first comment after the RS article

from some freeper asshat:

"The Lie Machine"

Apt title for this article, since it's full of innaccuracies that are being plagiarized from one liberal blog to the next.

Rolling Stone - stick to what you know: music.

[defendandprotect]

15. And these GOP "near riots" are oddly never bothered by police enforcement . . .even toting guns!!

[dotymed]

45. Isn't that amazing???

If we, as liberals, have a demonstration (I think it was
peaceful, but the MSM has tried to make it look otherwise)we
are shot with rubber bullets (they kill also) and blasted with
the latest in misery machines. Yet, the real threats
(rethuglicans with guns) are never disturbed. I do not
advocate violent protests, that only bites us in the ass, but
we damn sure have the same rights as the Rethuglicans. It
seems to me, that if President Obama really gave a damn, he
would issue a public condemnation against being disrespectful
(especially physically harming) citizens who demonstrate
peacefully. He could then ensure that "police state"
officers are prosecuted. This is not "to serve and
protect" anyone except the real criminals.
President Obama said "make me", when it came to real
change. How can we peacefully do that and dodge bullets too?

[defendandprotect]

55. Agree --

[defendandprotect]

16. And, yet, Democrats have failed to call DEMOCRATS out to demonstrate -- !!! ????

Unions haven't come out to demonstrate for MEDICARE FOR ALL -- !!!

Women's groups very quiet -- though who needs MEDICARE FOR ALL more than women and children?

[Butch350]

19. What a very passive lot they are...

...and sadistic. Democrats just love getting kicked in the ass and what do they do? Turn the other CHEEK!

[me b zola]

17. K&R

[MelissaB]

18. K&R

Oh, what a surprise.

[colsohlibgal]

20. Gullibility

No surprise this is very carefully orchestrated, and it succeeds because way too many people here are gullible plus/oblivious/don't dig deeper.

When they can successfully label, to an adequate percentage of the voting public (at least adequate enough to be able to steal it), a clear draft evader as a patriot and a war hero as unpatriotic and a fake hero, they can do anything.

And of course if they somehow have failed at these operations they have been able to rely on Diebold or the Supreme Court to tilt things.

Welcome to 1984 in 2009. Scary times to those of us who are not oblivious or misguided.

[Overseas]

21. K&R. Glad to see more documentation emerging

to substantiate what we've seen going on all around us, and augment the excellent research the Rachel Maddow team has done on this so far.

Perhaps NOW our conservative dominated mass media will have to cover the real story behind the nutty town hall storming and stop calling it "genuine grass roots" opposition to reform?

[malaise]

22. K & R

No surprise

[beac]

24. K&R-- but not surprising, alas. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

25. Yes, they out-organized us

I wish we had that kind of skill when it came to avoiding involvement in Iraq. We still can't put together enough people to stop the killing of our troops in Afghanistan.

Maybe we need to learn something from them about getting what you want out of politicians, especially when the demand is for the status quo.

[Stumbler]

26. Surprise, surprise...

[GreenTea]

27. This is an interest, exposing great story & read - Rolling Stone again on top of the stories

that fucking count and mean something!!

[kath]

36. Yes, Rolling Stone does some of the best REAL political reporting out there.

I wasn't real sure what to expect when I first subscribed 1 1/2 yrs ago - daughter was selling magazines for her team, so I picked a few mags.
We've LOVED receiving it, so much that we renewed. Not just stuff about music, but truly great political articles.

THe "Make-Believe Maverick" article about McCain last fall was FANTASTIC, as was reporting about Palin at the Repub COnvention(some great line about "Barbie addressing the Reichstag", or somesuch.)

Highly rec. RS!

[veganlush]

28. did anyone send this to rachel maddow yet?

[BrklynLiberal]

29. Excellent article!! thanks for positng.

[Botany]

30. "round up the usual suspects"

[kestrel91316]

31. They rolled out the Brooks Brothers mob, just in different attire this time.

[TankLV]

34. I knew that MONTHS ago, as it was FORMING, as did MOST here!!!

[Roland99]

35. As did anyone with an ounce of sense.

[Kablooie]

37. Doesn't surprise me. They always organize well to destroy. Us liberals will NEVER win ...

Unless we organize a stronger campaign.

But we never do.

And it's a hundred times easier to destroy than to build so we will always be at a disadvantage.

[BuelahWitch]

47. Yeah, I've thought these "Tea Party" people were paid operatives all along

Or at least part of them were.

[Hannah Bell]

54. we never do. even though "we" put together the biggest campaign war chest on record

& lots of feel-good campaign/inauguration events, mobilizing tens of thousands of people.

who were chomping at the bit to "do something" post-inauguration.

but none of that energy was utilized.

don't you wonder why?

[MH1]

38. "Secret"??

[usregimechange]

39. kick

[earcandle]

40. looks like it is obvious that we see the forest from the trees, but will the social fabric hold up?

I hope we are much stronger than this and go into action soon.

[Douglas Carpenter]

41. kick and recommend!!

[dotymed]

42. The only way to combat this

is for us (75%) who want the P.O.(at least), to attend these
meetings in large amounts and make ourselves heard (not by
rethuglican methods) by being informed, passionate citizens...

[sam sarrha]

44. i never heard they were happening till they did.. they were bussed in

[sam sarrha]

43. mass hypnosis.... i heard a lecture about Kent State by Kreskin, he said it was really easy to do.

[Lagomorph]

46. What about this is enlightening?

Politic Action Organizations have been around a long time. They all try to mobilize the grassroots people.

If they can get people out on the streets, they've accomplished their goal. It's been going on for decades. All of it is carefully orchestrated by professional shit disturbers.

It won't be hard to organize resistance to a program that demands directed, mandatory spending from citizens.

[SpiralHawk]

49. The Lie Machine = Republicons Against America

What a pack of Corporate Pharisees.

[LeftHander]

50. Jackboot Thuggary pure and simple.....nt

[newtothegame]

52. This ain't exactly surprising. Groups like moveon.org organized tons of our protests during Bush yrs

[deutsey]

53. What baffles me is that the Democratic Party seems so oblivious to

(and unprepared to fight against) the dirty tactics used by the Republicans and the powerful elites and interests that control the GOP. I always feel like the Dems gear up for a rough-and-tumble hockey match (or, increasingly, a Sunday afternoon badminton game) and are met every time on the ice by a GOP machine-gun nest.

Of course, in my more cynical moments (which are more and more often these days), I believe a few of the Dems are also under the thumb of these same elites and interests as well, so I guess it's really not that baffling.

:evilfrown: