A Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the health care law is expected any day now, but even if the Obama administration wins in the nation’s highest court, most evidence suggests it has lost miserably in the court of public opinion. National polls have consistently found the health care law has far more enemies than friends, including a recent New York Times/CBS News poll that found more than two-thirds of Americans hope the court will overturn some or all of it.
“The Democrats have done a very poor job of selling the program,” said Gary Schiff, 65, a retired teacher and businessman here. “All you hear about it now is the Republicans saying what’s wrong with it: that it’s socialism, that it’s going to bankrupt the country. I’ll give them credit; they’re great at framing the debate.” ...NYT
Let's just put a word in here for we-the-people. I think we deserve at least some of the ignominy for allowing the Republicans to get away with (potentially) destroying one of the smartest and most forward-looking pieces of legislation initiated by any recent president.
According to the New York Times report, money bought the Republican sales pitch. An inordinate amount of money.
...About $235 million has been spent on ads attacking the law since its passage in March 2010, according to a recent survey by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. Only $69 million has been spent on advertising supporting it. Just $700,000 of that comes from the Obama campaign, and none of its ads mentioning the law are currently being broadcast, said Elizabeth Wilner, vice president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. “It explains, in a nutshell, why polling shows attitudes about the law to be at best mixed,” she said. ...NYT
If we let that $235 million buy the means to throw us back into our predatory health insurance system, it's not so much that Republicans did it to us as that we allowed them to.
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The $235 million came, for the most part, from a familiar team: US Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS (much of it donated by Sheldon Adelson), and the American Action Network.
The American Action Network is largely the province of Fred Malek, an unsavory businessman (Marriott and more) with ties to Nixon and, of course, the Bushes. Wikipedia reminds us that his work for the Nixon administration included "a strategy to replace civil servants with Nixon supporters and to steer government resources to benefit Nixon's 1972 re-election." Malek also appears to be yet another Republican with a dubious relationship with the dog world, having "skinned, gutted and spitted [a dog] over a barbecue pit in the park" in Peoria.
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