Ok, my instincts have been that people should worry a bit less about the misinformation being spread around and focus a little more on the genuine fears and concerns that are being expressed by the protestors at the town hall meetings: over questions of cost, public versus private, and so on. I have had comments on this site from eminently sensible people with reasonable objections to the bills. They and others like them deserve to be heard.
But it's just getting harder and harder to keep on the middle ground when the radical right in America is so determined to circulate nonsense about what's being proposed and, perhaps more importantly, the moderate right has done so little to object to this kind of behaviour ...
Exhibit A: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and others create a national news story about the idea of "death panels" where American seniors will go to be euthanized by evil government bureaucrats. This untruth contributes substantially to growing opposition to the reform bill. As a result, congressmen abandon a perfectly reasonable part of the health care plan to do with optional end of life counselling and tacitly give credit to the original idea that there was a death panel in the proposals.
Meanwhile, we discover that the Republican 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill included elements of the end of life counselling that is now apparently evil. And that, during her brief stint as Alaska governor, Sarah Palin was a sponsor of a “Healthcare Decisions Day” which encouraged people to plan for end of life issues (here and here).
Exhibit B:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Glenn Beck's Operation | ||||
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These tactics didn't work in the election last year for two reasons: first, McCain was ambivalent about deploying them; second, there was the mother of all economic crises. Now McCain's off the team and a substantial section of Americans have revealed themselves to have about a six second historical memory. So all guns are blazing on the right.
I continue to think that we can get a reasonable bill out of this rather messy but perhaps salutary experience of populism in action. I continue to believe that Obama should keep to the high ground and continue to engage a broad grouping of congresspeople. I hope that a lot of this is being exaggerated by the fact it's August silly season and we'll be able to move on to more productive things once the negotiating starts again in September. But seriously, my right-wing Republican friends, you're making it very hard to sustain the argument that people should take your views seriously.
If Republicans are serious that Democrats should, in turn, be serious about their concerns, then they have a responsibility to stop circulating untruths, to focus on making their case in the manner one would expect from representatives of the party of Lincoln, and - perhaps most importantly - to disavow the irresponsible behaviour that radical right-wing politicians are engaging in.
