On Tuesday night, when I was setting up for the SCHIP vigil with a fellow activist in Philadelphia's beautiful Rittenhouse Square Park, she asked me why we didn't pick a location like Clark Park, closer to people who are affected by the program. There were several reasons but one we talked about is that generally people who are directly affected by human needs funding are disaffected politically and it's very hard to get them to come out on issues. That's why it was so easy to win the war on the poor; they don't come out. We agreed that now we're looking at open war on the middle class - let's see if they come out in numbers that matter.
They might if they heard some of the SCHIP debate in the House. On the GOP side you've got two sorts of speeches. There's the Hard Sell: this bill gives away health insurance to middle class families! We need to put low income children first! And the Soft Sell: We all love SCHIP. The GOP created SCHIP. It's a great program. We just want to see it do what it was intended to do. If only the Dems would compromise.
But no matter what the tactic, I keep hearing three phrases come up again and again: "middle-class," "illegals and their children" and "entitlement program." All of these are used in lies about the SCHIP program but they come up with enough regularity and are thrown in with enough sincerity and official-sounding language (the non-partisan Congressional Budget office tells us ...) that the GOP's real message is hitting our lizard brains right on target:
The American Middle Class, like those thieving illegals, does not deserve help from the government.
That's why the GOP is insisting on using the word "entitlement" even when they know that SCHIP is a capped block grant to the states and so, by definition, is not an entitlement program. But what better way to shame average citizens, survivors of Reagan's Class War? These are people who support SCHIP because they know that our health care system is a tragedy and that it isn't only the poor who need help surviving its costs but also the merely struggling. They can't bring themselves to believe that those people are entitled to any help with those problems. Losers like the poor and the elderly and the sick are entitled. The American Middle Class is made up of hard working, honest Americans who, if they know anything, know this:
The American Middle Class does not deserve help from the government.
That's the unvarnished message that the GOP obviously feels very comfortable sending to anyone who is paying attention to the SCHIP fight.
There are people who think that's crazy: (Sadly, No)
Guys, you’ve done outdone yerselves on this one. Please, please, please keep insulting middle-class families who can’t afford health insurance. I guarantee that it will launch you right back into power.
There are those who think it could work out well for the GOP: (Digby)
A great many people in this country believe that the misfortunes that befall others are their own fault but if something bad happens in their own lives it's just bad luck. Perhaps that's human nature. But one of the purposes of the rightwing's assault on reason is to make it impossible to make abstract arguments. And unless you are currently enmeshed in the health care system without insurance or dealing with expensive treatments, this is an abstract issue.
...
I stand by my belief that the Republicans believe that it is imperative for their own political health to defeat health care reform. I also think they may be right in thinking that failure to enact it will be extremely harmful to Democrats as well. In other words, this is a do or die issue for the Democrats. They need to get it done or risk putting a final nail in the coffin of the citizenry's extremely fragile belief in government. But it isn't going to be as easy politically as we may think here in the blogopsheric bubble. There's a lot of ejumakitin' to do.
I think that Digby's closer to right here but that the battle isn't for the Democratic party. That battle ended with the Clinton Administration. We don't have a Democratic party any more. But we still have a middle class and it's the battle to keep it that's being fought now. As usual, the GOP is more honest than the Dems. They come right out and tell us - the American Middle Class does not deserve help from the government. It exists only to the extent that it can fund the treasury so that we can funnel those monies into the pockets of the wealthy and multi-national corporations.
The Dems believe the same thing and will prove that again when they capitulate on the SCHIP bill, but it's their job to run around first pretending that they care about the well-being of the Middle Class - people who aren't poor and yet are held hostage to the fear of losing everything to bad luck. The Dems play that game just enough so that we can still believe that voting them into power will help; that change can ever come from within a system and that power is given up rather than taken away.
I don't know about you, but that makes the GOP the lesser of two evils in my book. At least they sign their ransom notes.
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