The "New Left-Wing Conspiracy" Substitutes Attacks on Limbaugh for Substance
By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
So much for setting a new tone in Washington. As I write this, 20 different operatives from labor, environmental and progressive groups are on a daily conference call plotting ways to attack people who oppose them. Politico calls them "The New Left-Wing Conspiracy", organized around a daily 8:45 a.m. phone call which began three weeks ago and which "marks a new level of coordination by the White House's allies."
The article describing this is very disturbing, with repeated references to "attacks" on opponents. For example:
The call has proved particularly effective at coordinating attacks on critics, said Jacki Schechner, the national communications director for Health Care for America Now, a labor-backed alliance of groups that support Democratic efforts to expand health care. "There's a coordination in terms of exposing the people who are trying to come out against reform—they've all got backgrounds and histories and pasts, and it's not taking long to unearth that and to unleash that, because we're all working together," Schechner said. When a new group called Conservatives for Patients Rights, for instance, launched an ad campaign featuring former health care executive Rick Scott, "There was a discussion about what do we know about this guy and in a very quick period of time we were able to come up with his background," she said.
Note that the woman quoted above is one of the White House's allies on health care, and she seems to be proud of the fact that this is not about the battle of ideas, but rather about exposing opponents' pasts and destroying their reputations. The 8:45 a.m. group was heavily involved in last week's attacks on Rush Limbaugh and is the launching pad for attacks on critics of the administration's proposals. They're not going after the critics' proposals, but the critics themselves. They're coordinating "in terms of exposing people," she said, and "it's not taking long to unearth that and to unleash that."
When you can't win on the merits of your message, you go after the messenger. Voters are sick and tired of this nasty, personal stuff. This is why good people are reluctant to go into politics these days. No wonder.
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Tags: liberals | Rush Limbaugh
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Reader Comments
Please Stop It!
For the love of God, all these groups need to stop this. Stop focusing on how to attack or hurt some other group and focus on how to help others and possibly get your own agenda through.
If your ideas are right then they will prevail if you can make your case and they are good enough for others to try to enact them. If no one agrees with you and you can't get your ideas understood, then have the grace to accept the fact that they might be right or ready for the rest of the country.
If you're in politics because you hate "ultra-liberals" or hate "reactionary-republicans" then you're the worst poison for the body politic. I want what's good for the country, not what fuels your prejudice about the other side.
We need informed debate in this country, not groups that seek to enforce positions.
what's good for the goose...
Republicans, directed by the master of character assassination Karl Rove, have been at the forefront of attacking the messenger for years. And now you suddenly don't like it? mmmmmmm
The left-wing clique
I'm not going to pretend to muster overwhelming outrage at anything lobbying groups, left or right, try tactically in Washington, but it should be plain that left-wing lobbying interests have no monopoly on intellectual 'subtlety', or even on plain intellect.
If GOP-affiliated operatives have gotten a bad reputation for going after the failures of personal morality in their opponents, these newly full-of-vim liberal activists are grimly trying to personalize the political. After all, just what is it that is meant by "[their] backgrounds and histories and pasts" when they talk about the 'anti-reformers' they're going after? That they frequent swingers clubs or do lines of blow? Or do they simply mean: well, they've been opposed to our policy for a long time, they've worked with conservatives, they give money to CPAc'? Well, golly gee! Conservatives with conservative pasts! Once the people hear about THAT, they'll know not to listen to these scoundrels! . . .
Not that the folks they're trying to villify are all Edmund Burke or something, but still-- why are they chattering on in this infantile, venomous high school clique sort of way about their political opponents? Shouldn't they use these meetings to, as suggested, hone their logic or something? One might think! . . .
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