Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

The conservative campaign against health care reform has degenerated into repeating the fantasies of a crazy lady posting on Facebook in Alaska and talking points spoon fed from the insurance industry.While perhaps not all Obama supporters are excited about this cause as they were about the election, the battle against Republican misinformation and smears certainly does have the feel of a general election campaign.

There are differing viewpoints as to how this will all play out. I’ve previously quoted Marc Ambinder as believing the strategy will turn out to be counterproductive. Josh Marshall posts a warning of a different danger arising from this:

Watching the current “debate” over healthcare reform, I find myself in the strange position of giving thanks for John McCain. His behavior during the election was anything but classy, but he did refuse to take that final step of endorsing the fully crazy wingnut memes (Obama is a Kenyan Muslim terrorist, etc.) even though certain folks were urging him to go there. When I see how easily the “death panel” and other completely-divorced-from-reality memes have taken hold of the public and the media, I can’t help but wonder if such crap would have propelled McCain to victory, if he had chosen to embrace it. Oh, the irony: McCain’s last shred of integrity saved us from a McCain presidency.

Even if this isn’t true, you can bet this is the lesson the GOP will take into 2012. What we’re seeing right now is a preview of the election (God help us).

It certainly is possible that this is the lesson the GOP will take into 2012. We can never underestimate the insanity in the party now that they have driven out most of the sensible people and the conservative movement has turned into an echo chamber for extremists.Whether this will help them is a different matter.

I don’t go along with the idea that repeating the right wing memes which McCain stayed away from might have propelled him to victory. McCain might have stayed away from these memes due to maintaining a shred of dignity, but this was also the pragmatic thing to do. His campaign was already seriously hurt, probably to the point where victory was impossible, by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. He already both had the support of the “wingnuts” and was being dragged down by them.

There is a certain percentage of people in this country who believe all the delusions common among the far right, and these people were already going to vote for McCain. Tying himself to these people also lost the moderates and rational conservatives. Claiming that Obama is a Muslim would have only appealed to those who were already planning to vote for him but risked alienating even more sane voters.

I wonder if Sarah Palin’s influence on the health care debate will be similar to her influence on the McCain campaign. Initially the choice of Palin resulted in a surge of excitement for the campaign, and even gave McCain a lead in the polls. Soon reality prevailed and Palin turned off far more voter s than she attracted for the ticket.

At present, her absurd claims about “death panels” are firing up the right wing. Right wing lies are also creating concern among many others. However, what happens when the main arguments from the right wing come down to things which are easily demonstrated as not being true by simply reading the actual legislation? Will the fear linger, dooming health insurance reform, or will reason prevail as it did during the general election campaign? Will sensible people who are momentarily frightened by the prospect of “death panels” show a change in position when the scare stories are debunked and see that the arguments from the right do not contain valid reasons to oppose health care reform?