It's the conservative noise machine, stupid.
But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.The thing is, we don't support the liberal noise machine. The blogs, the larger netroots, and talk radio are our noise machine. But who supports us? Who tries to get us involved in the health care debate? Sure we get administration talking points occasionally, and talking points from the health care groups, but actually coordinating a strategy with us? Please. Actually supporting our growth? Supporting us during a time of the collapse of ad prices, and thus our revenue? Not a lick. The Democratic party, and the liberal non-profits in town, do not support the blogs - they refuse to buy ads (strike that, sometimes they buy one ad, one, and think that that's supposed to show how much they care, and that that will get us through the year) - nor do they involve us, consider us, in any serious strategy discussion. And we wonder why the right is able to still so effectively use their noise machine against ours. Because they embrace theirs, they use theirs, they financially support theirs - and we ignore ours.
Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).
The White House, the DNC, the party organs, and the liberal non-profits have only themselves to blame for health care reform getting hijacked by the right wing noise machine. They were they smartest people in the world, and they wanted to go it alone. How's that going for you?
