I don't know whether this is an epic success on the part of the GOP or an epic failure on the part of the Democrats, but I suspect it's a combination of the two. A new NBC News poll, MOE +/- 3.5%, found that 55% of Americans think that it's "likely to happen" that President Obama's health care plan will give insurance to illegal immigrants, 54% believed that it's "likely to happen" that the government will be taking over the health care industry, 50% think it's "likely to happen" that the government will be paying for abortions, and an astounding 45% actually believe the most obvious of these lies, thinking that it's "likely to happen" that the government will be able to make decisions as to when to discontinue Medicare to elderly individuals. Each one of these is a complete lie peddled by those who couldn't care less about America's health care system, but who seek only to politically destroy the President. I don't know how this happened, but it's ridiculous. Death panels? This poll causes me to lose a bit of faith in the skepticism of the American people. Many conservatives will pretty much believe whatever their leaders tell them to believe; they don't put their political views through the sieve of critical thought. I was approached by an conservative friend of mine the other day; he worried about these "death panels" of which he'd just heard. When I told him that it was all complete crap, he didn't believe me. "I got the e-mail from Senator Fred Thompson!" he said. He didn't even consider the possibility that it was political, not social or compassionate, political motives behind the e-mail. He, for some reason, also believed that the health care plan was going to overhaul the health care industry and replace it with a British-style single-payer system. I explained the bill to him, how it would simply create a government-run competitor to private health insurance. He understood it. Granted, he remained opposed, but at least it was for a legitimate ideological concern. Rather selfishly, he vehemently opposes the government helping the less fortunate in any way, and it was for this reason he opposed the bill. At least he's cleared up on the whole "death panels" thing.
Another shocking thing revealed by the poll is that 23% of Americans get "MOST of [their] information about the health care debate" from Fox News. Yeah, the same people who are totally fine with airing a program hosted by someone who'll stoop so low so as to call someone a racist without anything to back it up. I'm not saying Fox News is a bad channel to watch. I watch it on occasion if I'm ever aching for some good comedy. But it's certainly not the place to get "MOST of your information about the health care debate". Get a mix, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, heck, you may as well take a look at what the BBC's got to say. Be a bit more critical of all sides of the issue, and debate the facts, not the falsehoods.
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3 comments:
its ethan again, still too lazy to log in to my google. First, given that at about half (I can't remember the specifics, I task you with finding them) of Americans view themselves as conservative, the fact that only 23% got most of their information from FOX news says that there is a huge chunk of the movement that is looking at other sources of information. The percentage who solely got their information from Liberal news sources such as CNN and MSNBC was almost exactly the same (I'm leaving the broadcast network news as neutral right now because I can't really remember how they lean, but I think its nominally liberal). As for your Glenn Beck link, at least he stated it was his opinion. Many on the left don't even grant that when speaking of those who oppose obama's policies.
A healthy dose of cynicism is good. It means that you aren't a total obama zombie :-)
Still Ethan. Found it. Janeane Garofalo, flat out labels the Tea Partyness as racist.
What makes you think I'm with this Garofalo woman? My views on the tea parties are pretty much that they're just immature and refuse to accept the responsibility of paying taxes. These aren't even people whose tax burdens are all that high. These are middle class folks who just have to file a tax return every April so their government can continue to run and provide services for them and apparently they don't care much for that. I suppose what's at the heart of what they're protesting is how the government's spending the money, but this is a democracy, and the majority voted for a Democrat, who will quite naturally levy slightly higher taxes to pay for more social services. The people they should really be going after is that majority who voted for President Obama and Congress.
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