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Leaked White House Memo Advises Democrats on How to Spin Obamacare
theweeklystandard.com ^ | August 20, 2010 | JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

Posted on 08/21/2010 12:49:34 PM PDT by goldendays

Leaked White House Memo Advises Democrats on How to Spin Obamacare The White House now explicitly recognizes repeal as a very real possibility. BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON August 20, 2010 7:55 AM

Politico has released a piece that begins as follows: "Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to 'improve it.'" This is a truly remarkable sentence. Legislation that the Congressional Budget Office says would cost about $2.5 trillion in its real first decade (2014 to 2023) wouldn't do the one thing that Americans most want out of health-care legislation: cut health care costs. It wouldn't, despite the administration's repeated claims to the contrary, cut deficits. But, on the bright side, it can (allegedly) be improved. That's an amazingly tepid claim to make on behalf of something with Obamacare's price tag.

The truth is that Obamacare cannot be improved. It can only be repealed. It was passed as "comprehensive legislation," and it must be repealed comprehensively.

The vast majority of Americans recognize this. Rasmussen's latest survey of likely voters shows Americans favoring repeal by the overwhelming tally of 60 to 36 percent. This 24-point margin is Rasmussen's 2nd-highest in the 21 polls it has conducted in the five months since passage, despite, as Politico puts it, "the White House's all-out communications effort" in the interim – much of it at taxpayer expense.

Politico reports that White House allies' "confidential presentation" (it was leaked to Politico "by a source on the call" on which it was outlined) "concedes that groups typically supportive of Democratic causes," including those under 40, "have not been won over by the plan." Indeed, Rasmussen's latest survey shows that voters in their 30s favor repeal by a 37-point margin (67 to 30 percent), while those voters in their 30s who feel "strongly" (either way) support repeal by the tally of 61 to 17 percent.

Perhaps most tellingly, Politico writes that the presentation's "final page of 'Don'ts' counsels against claiming 'the law will reduce costs and deficit.'" Instead, the presentation advises, "Keep claims small and credible"; "don’t overpromise or 'spin' what the law delivers." Thus, the administration’s central claim from the start – made ad nauseam by everyone from President Obama on down – that Obamacare would somehow reduce health care costs, is apparently just "spin." (This, of course, was recognized by a great many Americans all along.) And now, a $2.5 trillion law that's longer than War and Peace must, incredibly, be defended on the basis of claims that are "small and credible."

Highlighting the striking degree to which the administration is on the defensive five months after passage and two months before the midterms, the presentation says, "People can be moved from initial skepticism and support for repeal of the law to favorable feelings and resisting repeal." Enthusiastic or clear support is apparently no longer even on the table, and even White House allies now explicitly recognize repeal as a very real possibility.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bhohealthcare; deathcare; deathpanels; democrats; donttalkcost; healthcare; nothealthcare; obama; obamacare; obamacarecost; palin; repeal; romney; romneycare; romneycareplus; unconstitutional
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1 posted on 08/21/2010 12:49:38 PM PDT by goldendays
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To: goldendays

Go down in flames.............

That’s what this deserves.

P.S Dems—— you fooled them once, to quote the Who “ Wont get fooled again”


2 posted on 08/21/2010 12:54:08 PM PDT by patriotspride
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To: goldendays
"Obamacare cannot be improved. It can only be repealed."
3 posted on 08/21/2010 12:57:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin ("They do their business behind closed doors, and pretend that the world is just beggin' for more.")
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To: goldendays
Keep claims small and credible

That's a tall order for Dems...

4 posted on 08/21/2010 12:59:37 PM PDT by neodad (USS Vincennes (CG 49) "Freedom's Fortress")
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To: BenLurkin
"Obamacare cannot be improved. It can only be repealed."

I dunno. How about making it applicable solely to the President and his staff?

5 posted on 08/21/2010 1:00:05 PM PDT by Mojave (Ignorant and stoned - Obama's natural constituency.)
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To: goldendays

Repealing Obamacare is all well and good but in the end it doesn’t matter. Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution does not specifically list regulating health care as an enumerated power and therefore is unconstitutional! The people are not bound to comply with an unconstitutional act regardless of the outcome in Congress! The people are the government and have the final say as to how they will be governed! It is time for people to defend the Constitution by openly defying the marxist regime!


6 posted on 08/21/2010 1:01:03 PM PDT by Man50D (Fair Tax, you earn it, you keep it! www.FairTaxNation.com)
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To: goldendays
"People can be moved from initial skepticism and support for repeal of the law to favorable feelings and resisting repeal."

Sure. Does not meet a single one of the claimed objectives and benefits, and we're going to all move to "favorable feelings"? Not a snowball's chance. The only thing that cause "favorable feelings" would be ejection of all the commies and socialists from Congress and impeachment hearings against Obama. Only then would I switch to favorable feelings.

7 posted on 08/21/2010 1:01:34 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: AdmSmith; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; bigheadfred; blueyon; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; ...
Thanks goldendays. Obama should take a bow.
8 posted on 08/21/2010 1:01:45 PM PDT by SunkenCiv ("The bad jazz a cat blows wails long after he's cut out." -- Lord Buckley)
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To: goldendays

You can’t spin this... Surgeons Going Galt...http://vimeo.com/11378278


9 posted on 08/21/2010 1:03:26 PM PDT by glocker23 (Live Free Or Die)
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To: goldendays

Hmmm. Each week we get a new big-time leak (this; the secret amnesty memos; the Sherrod meeting info, etc.)...and then Barack Milhaus runs away from the Oval Office to take another vacation. Hmmm...


10 posted on 08/21/2010 1:05:41 PM PDT by Qbert
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11 posted on 08/21/2010 1:08:06 PM PDT by combat_boots (The Lion of Judah cometh. Hallelujah. Gloria Patri, Filio et Spirito Sancto.)
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To: patriotspride

P.S Dems—— you fooled them once, to quote the Who “ Wont get fooled again”

They only fooled themselves. They never fooled the American public and there will be hell to pay in Novermber.


12 posted on 08/21/2010 1:08:21 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (AKA Rodrigo de Bivar)
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To: goldendays

I love the sound of ‘REPEAL’ in the morning.

REPEAL Obamacare.
REPEAL the 16th.
REPEAL the 17th.

Lovely sound.


13 posted on 08/21/2010 1:11:50 PM PDT by Hostage
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To: goldendays

I don’t think the American people are going to buy the WH’s new spin on health care. They never supported this bill, support it even less now and no amount of bs is changing that.

My concern is the new spin gives our RINO’s a way out of supporting and voting for full repeal of the bill.

Do not fix it - do not tweak it - REPEAL THE DAMNED THING

We’re going to have to stand on their necks just as hard as Pelosi stood on ours.


14 posted on 08/21/2010 1:12:19 PM PDT by Brytani (There Is No (D) in November! Go Allen!!! www.allenwestforcongress.com)
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To: goldendays

Trust the Rats to “fix” — er, “improve” — Obamacare? Wait, wasn’t it the Rats that drove the healthcare reform car into the ditch? Should America vote to give the keys again in November?


15 posted on 08/21/2010 1:13:04 PM PDT by fightinJAG (Congress won't stop spending, so I WILL.. . . Starve the beast!)
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To: goldendays

Subtract negro support from the Obama government health care takeover, and it has virtually no support among rank and file, average, everyday Americans. And negroes, of course, would support every move Obama made, even if he were out strangling kittens on the WH lawn.


16 posted on 08/21/2010 1:18:34 PM PDT by hampdenkid
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To: goldendays

This piece may accurately measure voter sentiment but it has no practical value.

To repeal Obamacare will take 2/3s of Congress and the numbers will not be there after the election. Some democrats may swing over to repeal but many of those that whisper such now will be defeated in November because they are blue dogs who are not supported by the DNC leadership.

The leaked memo if it actually exists is merely trying to downplay Obamacare as an issue in the Fall elections, That the Weekly Standard would stretch it as a fear of repeal is well, a stretch.


17 posted on 08/21/2010 1:22:26 PM PDT by Hostage
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'donttalkcost' keyword, newest to oldest: some archival stuff: interesting: Death Panels:
18 posted on 08/21/2010 1:44:44 PM PDT by SunkenCiv ("The bad jazz a cat blows wails long after he's cut out." -- Lord Buckley)
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To: Hostage

Think bigger picture. Any GOP majority in either the House or Senate means that 0bamacare won’t get funded.

Period.

It’s dead.


19 posted on 08/21/2010 2:04:30 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: goldendays
Obamacare

ping

20 posted on 08/21/2010 2:16:54 PM PDT by TruthHound ("He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." --Leonardo da Vinci)
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