If Only I'd Found This In March!

I'd ran across this article in the Journal The Democratic Strategist a few weeks ago and thought it very interesting... titled "Get Ready Democrats - Obama's opponents are getting set to 'unleash hell'", it immediately caught my attention. The author, James Vega, lays out the multi pronged approach to attacking the president he expects to see in the near future. I'd read SEVERAL articles on health care that day, and as I scanned through this one I could see glaring examples of Vega's talking points flash through my head in the images and headlines I'd recently read. In my mind, this was yet another piece on media spin and astroturf lobbyist which I book marked to go over more thoroughly later...

Finally today I go back and read the article more closely and two things immediately jumped out at me: 1. this policy referenced in the article was not health care at all, but economic policy and 2. it was written back in MARCH!!! Yikes! I would say that the names have changed but the game is the same, except the names really haven't changed either (Freedom Works)!

And speaking of Freedom Works, I saw Dick Armey on Meet the Press yesterday and that man is (pardon my french) a bitter, lying, sack of dung! He ACTUALLY started out by launching into how the townhall protester's behavior of late may not exactly be shining examples of civility but that their constant comparisons of the President to Adolf Hitler were merely the same type of hyperbolic rhetoric used by the group MoveOn.org against Bush during his administration!!! A charge that has been discredited six ways til Sunday. David Gregory let the statement go unchallenged (because he's useless) but THANKFULLY Rachel Maddow did not. Armey's obvious contempt for Maddow and her outdated use of "facts" was obvious. THEN (because I have to much time on my hands) I went a'googlin' to fact check what he had said and stumbled upon Freedom Works website - wherein a separate blogger repeats the same lie AND I find THIS galling front page story! *SIGH* But I digress... for the sake of my soul and my blood pressure, I will move on from this topic but I will NOT be a David Gregory and allow it to float along unchallenged.

So take a moment to read this wise strategists article and use it as the backdrop on which to set - not just the health care reform "debate" - but oppositions approach to Obama policy in general. And reflect on what I thought was the most chilling part in the piece:

"On the contrary, the scope of his ambition to be a solidly progressive Roosevelt-style president makes him appear as a genuine threat -- not just for committed Republicans, but to a substantial group beyond. For many, this threat is so grave that insuring the defeat of Obama’s political program now takes priority over what might be best for the economy. "

Except you replace the word "economy" with other related policies like "health care", "America", or "our environment"... Same game, different names.