It's always the messaging, part LXXVII - Gateway Pundit: "Obama: my biggest mistake was 'not being able to tell a good story'." Remember America: it's not Obama's policies, it's your fault for not appreciating how great they've been.
Extra - Ace: "I regret not speaking slower and using smaller words."
More - Deploy the messaging! Quinnipiac: "The Affordable Care Act is a tax hike, Americans say 55-36 percent."
And this - Hot Air: "Yeah. Just yesterday I was thinking, “If only he’d talked more about how awesome it is that 25-year-olds can stay on their parents’ insurance under ObamaCare, I’d totally be willing to choke on that trillion-dollar pricetag."
14 comments:
Absolutely, as long as we can still say the treacherous lying Democrats tricked the stupid public into torpedoing George W. Bush's wonderful Social Security "60 day, 60 stop" privatization tour.
Mitt Romney earlier this week, to the NAACP: "I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American families, you would vote for me for president."
Translation:
Remember blacks: it's not Romney's policies, it's your fault for not appreciating how great they are.
(Seriously, is "I'm still convinced my idea would have worked better if more people got it" some dramatic new concept in politics? And is it always wrong?)
It is when you add $5 trillion in debt, unemployment is at 8.2%, and 83% of doctors say they might quit rather than take Obamacare.
Doesn't sound to me like "messaging" is the "biggest mistake." But then when you get a Nobel Prize for nothing, I can see how you might think that.
83% of doctors will quit the same way all of those Republican governors who also made massive noise about rejecting their state's stimulus money did. (Hint: the ultimate number was very circular and its last name was Mostel.) Hmm, I wonder how the great ACA opt-out is gonna go?
Internal G.O.P. strategizing has long been to stop Hillarycare... er, Obamacare, before it takes hold, gets popular, and the electoral benefit rebounds to the Democrats for 40-50 years. This is not a secret.
You'd think that the political arcs of Medicare and Social Security, for which the opposition messaging was originally just as fierce and the predictions just as apocalyptic, might have taught the party a strategic lesson. Messaging will turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes regarding Obamacare, starting with that name... but guess whose.
Medicare and Social Security passed with strong bipartisan backing.
Obamacare? Well I'm sure the messaging with catch up with it and it will become popular. I'm guessing that will occur when the taxes start to kick in.
After the America-hating Supreme Court ignored the careful, objective analysis of the blogosphere and ruled the ACA was constitutional, Romney went up to a podium to promise that he would make it his top priority to undo the legislation.
He then went on to say that what America really needs is a solution that provides all the elements of the ACA.
Just don't call it Obamacare.
Bob Dole worked his tail off to come up with a plan that had broad bipartisan support and included elements (like the individual mandate), that were added at the insistence of conservatives.
Why was he motivated to do this? Because he was a patriot and it is in the interests of America to do this.
Where did the Republican support go? It was lost in the Gingrich-led zeal to not provide the (at the time) struggling Bill Clinton with any political momentum, even though Clinton was proposing a re-tread of Dole's plan.
Sounds familiar.
Romney implemented his re-tread of this same plan before the election of Barack Obama and the epiphany on the part of the GOP that a plan created by them and endorsed by the AEI and the Heritage Foundation, was in point of fact the greatest threat to freedom in the history of the United States.
Massachusetts' unemployment rate is around 6%, while the rest of the country is around 8%.
One can only imagine how much better off we'd be without Romney's economy-wrecking, job-killing legislation.
There were fierce financial and rhetorical campaigns waged against both Social Security and Medicare before the opposition knuckled under. Why else do you suppose those bipartisan results were and are regarded as the Democratic Party's laws?
When the taxes start to kick in, fewer than 3% of taxpayers will owe them and less than that will opt to hold their ground and pay them, and maybe half of those will be conservatives, and a bare plurality of them will be registered voters. There are more Native Americans than that. Meanwhile, the percentage of citizens who will perceive a personal benefit will be an ever so slightly larger number.
The scare speech about having your doctor taken away from you, and death panels executing Nana, and the end of freedom will be more and more difficult to sustain with each day those things do not happen. Again, the GOP's policy memos are explicit, and they aren't hard to Google. An emotionally healthy national party, having gone 0-for-2, would have done something to co-opt the health care law. For the rest of our lives, you and I will see the electoral result of its not having done so.
For opponents, awaiting the massive negative blowback to Obamacare is going to make the buildup to the great 6/28 Supreme Court overturn seem rewarding.
So the popularity of Obamacare is inevitable and the popularity of entitlements is forever? What a relief. Because these things "will not happen" despite warnings from the AMA to the CBO.
Businesses won't drop employee health care and leave workers to the "exchanges"? Small businesses won't cut back to 49 employees? Younger workers won't notice they're paying much higher rates thanks to "community" pricing of health insurance? Yes, "somebody else" will pay the taxes, and that always works out for the best when Washington controls money.
Lucid Americans understand "there's no such thing as a free lunch." So far, at least when it comes to Obamacare, they're still in the majority (never out!)
As for entitlements: boy they're popular and that will never change. I'm sure when Social Security benefits are automatically cut in 2030, all those Americans will be pleased as punch to be part of such a great program.
Social Security's popularity has never ebbed in 70+ years, but as it gets nearer its 100th, they'll see! They'll all see!
"Obamacare's government takeover" is flat in the polls, but virtually every facet of it is well-liked. That's what worries lucid Americans who happen to be GOP strategists.
And yet, and yet, there's something wrong with the messaging. This is where I came in.
The ACA hasn't rolled in yet. You mean it's much easier to negatively define nothing than to negatively define something? This is startling, eye-opening stuff! Maybe even Politics 102!
You take the polls, we'll make do with the SCOTUS ruling.
Would this be the same SCOTUS that a millisecond before the ruling was ignoring the rule of law for political reasons?
A second later: the greatest imprimatur ever!
Call me when the polls - if ever - pass 50%.
Fleeting Trends That Could Easily Change: Social Security’s popularity (77 years).
Eternal Facts That Are Carved in Stone: Obamacare’s polling numbers (2009-present).
The common thread: our inability to pay for them.
Would this be the same SCOTUS that a millisecond before the ruling was ignoring the rule of law for political reasons?
A second later: the greatest imprimatur ever!
Call me when the polls - if ever - pass 50%.
Stay near a phone, because support has ticked up sharply: +9% across the last two Pew polls, +15% in Reuters, +7% in Gallup, +16% in ABC/WaPo.
More to the point: who cares? Are you seriously giving more consideration to 44% in a poll than to 44% in the Supreme Court chambers? All condolences to conservatives, who went to sleep Christmas night giddily dreaming of the wonderful gift ever, and woke up to find John Roberts' garbage under their trees. But get real.
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