Americans for Prosperity Compares Health Care Reform To Holocaust, Tells Protesters To Put 'Fear Of God' In Members Of Congress
During the course of the last week, you may have wondered why anti-health care reform activists are so riled up--what buttons are being pushed by the people encouraging the town hall disruptions.
Well, here's video footage of a Patients First bus tour event in Pueblo, CO, that shines some light on that.
Patients First is a project of Americans for Prosperity--one of the key conservative interests groups helping to organize the town hall protests we've been covering. The speaker repeats the debunked conservative canard that Democratic health care reform will mandate physician assisted suicide. "Adolf Hitler issued six million end of life orders--he called his program the final solution. I kind of wonder what we're going to call ours."
And after comparing Democratic health care reform efforts to the murderous regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, the speaker advises his audience to "go to offices of members of Congress and put the fear of god in them."
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
As Steven Pearlstein put it so well this morning, these folks are "political terrorists" -- and that's an understatement.
August 7, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ignorance on display.....
August 7, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ignorance is a Republican virtue. Intellectuals and elites are the enemy. Given the Republican track record on killing off education and the dumbing down of the electorate, they had to package ignorance as an achievement.
August 7, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hence the enthusiasm for Sarah Palin, who proudly embodies willful ignorance.
August 7, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
And here it is in a nutshell. Who's the Republican base now?
It's people who are either so stupid, so disconnected from objective reality or both, that they willingly believe that the Democrats' solution to health care involves killing old people.
This is why when you try to tell them "no, really, our health care plan does not involve euthenaziation of old people," they respond with "well, that's what you say, you and all your big words and smooth talk, but I know what's what, and I don't believe a word of it!"
Stupid people, deranged people and stupid deranged people. That's the tiger the GOP is riding.
August 7, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I rather think the repuglican base consists of people with a warped concepts of what America stands for, what rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and what their duty to the Republic really is. For instance, they seem not to be bothered by paying local city, county and state taxes for highways, parks, schools and so forth all in the name of the public good. Mainly because they benefit by sharing the costs with all citizens equally. However, on a National scale they get their feathers all ruffled up with the possibility someone is going to get something for free at their expense. Little do they understand, single taxpayers in their neighborhood pay taxes to support the schools, libraries and parks the repuglican's children attend, study in and play at. In short, the single taxpayer subsidies the family taxpayer. I think the proper word to use here is hypocrisy.
August 7, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wish they were at least that rational. Experience in my home state (California), unfortunately, suggests otherwise. Ever since the passage of Prop. 13, itself the harbinger of the "destroy big government except we want all its nice services but don't want to pay for them" movement, the people here have shown themselves unwilling to pay any kind of taxes -- property, state, municipal, county, local -- to provide services, especially public schools. Then we complain about how awful the schools and roads are. We pass a Three Strikes law that provides for lifetime incarceration for a nonviolent felony conviction (provided it's a "third strike") and then pour billions into prisons, which still isn't enough, and we stack prisoners like sardines in every available nook and cranny of our prisons (forget the cells, they filled up a long time ago). Proposition 13 remains a political third rail, as our state legislature just kept a whole bunch of corporate tax breaks while slashing vital services that actually return money to the state through standard economic multiplier effects.
It's just unbelievable. In a few years we'll be Somalia on the Pacific. And with our crazy 2/3 budget rules, plus Prop 13, there's enough of a minority of knuckle-draggers eager to take us there.
August 7, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a great chance for Dem Party to make a party alignment change as big as the Southern strategy did for GOP, but it's going to be a bare-knuckle fight -- if they have the stomach.
If they don't, many of us will continue to vote Green and such.
August 7, 2009 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is another group of people, too. It is the Republicans that aren't stupid or deranged but are hell-bent on being right and on winning. They don't like any of Obama's agenda. But they don't *really* think that Obama is going to euthanize old people, they see the this extreme rhetoric as a tactic with which they can stop Obama's agenda. They justify this tactic with the belief that they are right and they must "win". I don't think there are many lines they won't cross.
August 7, 2009 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
And, John Cornyn, for example, knows better about teabaggers from his own experience. His telling Obama to stop telling the truth about this is ridiculous, and he knows it.
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/08/whackjob-cornyn-asks-obama-to-stop.html
August 7, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I find it incredibly difficult to watch. When he goes from "counseling" to "order" to "sentence" to Stalin in about 4 sentences I just had to click the stop button because I knew where he was heading.
What delusion!!!
So sad to see the powerful using the ignorant this way. What sort of regime does that remind you of?
It is darkly brilliant. It seems like someone on the far right is conscious enough to be able to look in the mirror and see exactly what is there and then accuse the Democrats of being those things; from Nazi-like tactics to fiscal irresponsibility to big brother government collecting its opponents' personal data. It leaves the Dems first retort as, "I'm not a Nazi, you are!" Not very compelling.
How do you convince people that the people in whom they've placed their trust are liars, thieves and scoundrels?
August 7, 2009 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is precisely the question.
August 7, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
They'd have to admit to themselves they've been duped and destroy their entire belief system. Authoritarian followers need their daddy figures, even when their daddies are bad people.
They unilaterally surrender their capacity to reason, just as authoritarian principles require them to do. Loyalty above all else or else they'd be toxicly shamed and accused of being bad conservatives.
They are treated and behave like children probably because they were physically/emotionally abused at a young age and are emotionally retarded as a result, making them easily susceptible to manipulation.
- FTF
August 7, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's pretty Rove-ian, isn't it, attaching your own weakness onto your opponent. John Kerry becomes a Vietnam shirker, not GWB. The Democrats become the party of spying on Americans, not the Republicans. John McCain gets to call Michael Moore "disingenous" at the GOP convention, and it sticks. And Democrats become the ones surrounding the Bürgerbräukeller.
It's a strange tactic, but you're right -- it leaves Democrats with little to say but "We are not, YOU are!". But the damage is done, and that's a pretty ineffective counterargument.
The GOP is good at making a loud, spurious argument first. It's so surreal to read comments, not only at right-wing blogs, but on some of those news stories about last night's Tampa townhall, that say things like "Typical libs, ignoring the facts. Read the bill!" and "Liberals ignore facts and work strictly on emotion". It's like they're arguing their point in some kind of rhetorical 4th dimension, or in Toontown. And how can you counter points made in Toontown?
I think there are still enough reality-based people in the US citizenry to see through this chaff to begin with.
August 7, 2009 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is my most infuriating point as well. How do you counter the projection these jerks are so good at? Rove was the master of it and the Dems never seem to have the instinct to beat them at their own game. If you just tell the truth about the Lizard Party it sounds awful enough. I say just lie about them too. Just say they are all corporate whores who collect millions in bribes and let thousands of little people get sick and die .... oh yeah .... that is actually true..... sigh....
August 7, 2009 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
When is the Republican leadership (I know, what's that?) going to start condemning this bullshit?
August 7, 2009 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Condemning? They're condoning.
No, more than they, they're inciting and fomenting.
These people -- one of the "major" political parties -- are nihilists and corporate stooges, willing to bring the entire country down if it gets them back into power, where they can line the pockets of their corporate benefactors.
August 7, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
None of it has anything to do with anything. Not Health care reform. Nor Energy Policy. Nor the Stimulus. Nor the Recession. Etc. Etc.
This has been, is, and always will be about President Obama.
First we had the drive by the radical right to prevent his election. Then the shock that it actually happened. Then we got a period of denial. Now we are at the rage and anger stage. And we'll probably stay there for quite some time.
If McCain or Hillary were President, and were advocating the same things, they'd all be more or less fine with it.
I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions. I think I have a very good idea of where its coming from.
August 7, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that race is a main driver for many of the teabagger/birther/rioters but I think they'd have been out there just the same if it were Hillary or Kerry or Dean or any liberal.
And the reason they'd be out there is because the right wing hate machine funded by today's robber barons have a lot on the line right now. Their era of free money is coming to an end so they need as many soldiers as they can buy/scare/coerce/etc.
August 7, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
And here it is in a nutshell. Who's the Republican base now?
A group of sheople who watch Faux News, listen to Drugs Limbaugh, and maybe even read the Worldnut Daily, Weakly (American) Standard, and Nutional Repuke, and then considered themselves to be "informed". They are incredibly ignorant, but wrap themselves in talking points as a defense mechanism.
They have no love for America, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, rule of law, or anything the Founding Fathers actually wrote about. They simply want power. They NEED power. It is everything. They literally equate partisan Republican fealty to patriotism. Shutting down somebody else's freedom of speech is good, if they have the "wrong" opinion. If you have to be violent to do it, well, it's the fault of the "others" for making me be violent.
These people are un-American. They need to attend a whole series of civics classes.
August 7, 2009 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder part of the problem lies in the way Congress writes laws. Over 1000 pages of legalese is easy to deliberately misinterpret. Yeh, sure, you can read the bill for yourself, but it is very hard to interpret it for yourself correctly, and when language is convoluted, it raises suspicians about what the writer is trying to hide.
So how about legislation written in plain English? Write it so it says what the congress intends it to say, without the obtuse structures and refernces to paragraphs in other laws? Write it in a style that everyone can understand and you won't have to deal with an email containing dozens of inflamatory misinterpretations.
August 7, 2009 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
But, but, then we might not need lawyers...
Texas would not have written the 'Law of parties', which allowed innocent people to be convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Some may have been executed. Because they were tried with the person who did commit the crime as a party to it - no matter how thin. Guilt by association to the Nth degree.
Extends into state referendums that are worded so poorly it could be interpreted either way.
August 8, 2009 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Does anyone have any footage of Tea Party activists at recent Republican town hall meetings?
August 7, 2009 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some here may find this lunacy humorous but it is not. It is very scary. When people realized how many "birthers" there were they were pretty much flabberghasted, now you see how not funny this is. These people have morphed into some kind of hate cult, they are every bit as indoctrinated as the Manson family. And there are a whole lot of them.
August 8, 2009 8:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I rather think the repuglican base consists of people with a warped concepts of what America stands for, what rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and what their duty to the Republic really is. For instance, they seem not to be bothered by paying local city, county and state taxes for highways, parks, schools and so forth all in the name of the public good. Mainly because they benefit by sharing the costs with all citizens equally. However, on a National scale they get their feathers all ruffled up with the possibility someone is going to get something for free at their expense. Little do they understand, single taxpayers in their neighborhood pay taxes to support the schools, libraries and parks the repuglican's children attend, study in and play at. In short, the single taxpayer subsidies the family taxpayer. I think the proper word to use here is hypocrisy.
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June 6, 2010 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink