Month: August 2009
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Brief APSA hiatus
Blogging will be minimal to non-existent until my paper is ready for the American Political Science Association conference next week in Toronto… Update 9/6 12:39 PM: Apologies — my paper writing ended up converging with my trip to APSA (just leaving Toronto now). I’ll be back to blogging after Labor Day.
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Health care framing tactics failing
During the Bush years, many Democrats came to believe they were losing elections due to their inadequate framing tactics — a belief that turned the linguist George Lakoff into an unlikely guru figure. It’s a convenient excuse, but there’s little systematic evidence that framing tactics can change the dynamics of the national debate under normal
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Misleading pro-reform claims on “rationing”
It’s good to see Politifact debunking the claim by Howard Dean that “[t]here’s no rationing in any of these [health care] bills” in Congress — a statement that suggests the plans would prevent or end rationing. It’s a misleading tactic that has also been used by the Obama administration recently on its Health Insurance Reform
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Tracking the “death panel” myth
Talking Points Memo has a nice feature tracking the history and evolution of the “death panel”/euthanasia meme from its origins with Betsy McCaughey to the current “death book” for veterans myth.
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August ’09 isn’t like August ’08
Many liberal bloggers and commentators are now blaming President Obama for a strategic failure in his approach to health care reform specifically and his presidency in general. In a TNR Online article, Ed Kilgore compares this rising tide of liberal doubt to the “doldrums” of August ’08 when Obama was tied in the polls with
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Grassley & McCain shamed on “death panels”
The media backlash against the “death panel”/euthanasia myth continued on Sunday as CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer and ABC This Week host George Stephanopoulos pressed prominent Republicans on the issue. First, watch Grassley squirm as he tries to defend his false claim that the government could decide to “pull the plug on grandma”
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The bipartisan sustainability meme
In an interview with the Helena Independent Record, Senate Finance chair Max Baucus defended his emphasis on trying to solicit widespread GOP support for the health care bill by claiming that bipartisan legislation is “more sustainable… more durable and long-lasting”: In a 50-minute interview with the Independent Record’s editorial board, Baucus defended his huddling with
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“Death panel” shaming works, but too late?
[Update (6/30/10): Serious questions have been raised about the validity of Research 2000’s polls. The results below should thus be viewed as potentially suspect until the matter is resolved.] Good news — widespread denunciation of the euthanasia/”death panel” myth as false by the press is prompting conservative elites to distance themselves from the claim. National
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Marshall calls out “treason,” gets backlash
I’ve been critical of Josh Marshall for pandering to his liberal audience, so I have to give him and TPM DC blogger Brian Beutler credit for calling out the vile “treason” rhetoric of New York Democrat Eric Massa. (Massa said Chuck Grassley’s false claim that health care reform would create “a government program that determines
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Max Baucus unclear on YouTube concept
Does Max Baucus really call handheld video cameras “YouTubes”? As he traverses the state he has represented in the Senate for 31 years, Mr. Baucus, the Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, never seems far from being buried under some rhetorical avalanche. After speaking at a preventive-care conference here last week, he