Kool-Aid Man, the new GOP mascot (image via Wikipedia)
The Times reported yesterday that the Republican response to the Supreme Court’s decision on health care was closely orchestrated by the Romney campaign. Michael Shear writes that, mere seconds after the ruling was handed down, Romney’s policy director “sent an e-mail to about three dozen senior Republicans on Capitol Hill and in state attorneys general’s office” that “unleashed a public relations plan that was nine weeks in the making and designed to make sure that the Republican response to whatever the court decided served Mr. Romney’s presidential ambitions”:
“Please stand by. Reviewing. Will circulate answer,” the e-mail, sent at 10:17 a.m. said in part.
Minutes later, at 10:27 a.m., Mr. Chen sent another e-mail: “Go with upheld.”
Shear describes the three scenarios — one in which the law was upheld entirely, one in which it was overturned, and one in which the verdict was mixed — gamed out in the Boston headquarters. For each, standard talking points, Twitter hashtags, and online responses were developed. Sean Spicer, the RNC communications director, is quoted as saying “Everybody was going to take their cue from Governor Romney.”
Judging from the reactions by Republicans up and down the ballot, Romney’s party either followed the memo to a T, responding to the “one message” directive with an almost cartoonish Rovian devotion, or conservatives have simply been drinking their own Kool Aid for so long that extremist Tea Party rhetoric now comes as second nature. The first version of events is actually most disturbing, as it assumes that the Romney campaign was fully on-board with the extremist, Obama-hates-America rhetoric that GOP officials spent yesterday delivering.
Even before I saw Shear’s piece in the Times, the similarities between the Republican responses were striking. Even Henry Ford’s factories never achieved such a degree of standardization and interchangeability. Of course, Ford never had Sarah Palin’s Facebook page from which to crib nearly identical — and identically heated — hyperbole. While not everyone stuck to the script (one hopes that Indiana Representative Mike Pence was not using a Romney-endorsed talking point when he compared the SCOTUS decision upholding health care reform to the 9/11 attacks), enough conservatives parroted the party line that I was left with a strong sense of deja vu. If I hear the word “freedom” one more time, I think I might throw up.
A sampling:
Virginia Attorney General Ted Cuccinelli, who spearheaded the legal challenges to the ACA: “This is a dark day for the American people, the Constitution and the rule of law. This is a dark day for American liberty.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.): “The Supreme Court ruling on the president’s health care plan resulted in a sad day for freedom, liberty and the American people.”
Sen. Mike Lee (Utah): “The individual mandate violates basic American freedoms and personal liberty in a way no Congress had before attempted in the 225-year history of our Republic.”
(Funny, because I can think of a couple of bigger violations right off the of my head, starting with the Alien and Sedition Act and including any number of statues supporting “separate but equal” segregation. State-sanctioned sterilization of “mentally feeble” citizens in the early 20th century comes to mind as well. But hey, Sen. Lee feels those are small beans compared to the requirement to have health insurance!)
Rep. Todd Akin (Miss.): “This is a crushing blow to freedom and an absolute insult to the dignity of all Americans.”
Rep. Tom Price (Ga.): “Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court has set a dangerous precedent by allowing this administration to continue pursuing its unbridled effort to erode personal freedom and undo the principles upon which this country was founded.”
Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.): “Today the Supreme Court — the ruling body that our Founding Fathers created to protect citizens from tyranny — decided to uphold Obamacare and thus stripped Americans of their personal liberties and freedoms.”
The best (worst?) example of such breathless overstatement comes, naturally, from Ben Shapiro, the editor-at-large of Andrew Breitbart’s website: “This is the greatest destruction of individual liberty since Dred Scott. This is the end of America as we know it. No exaggeration.”
No, no exaggeration at all. Though the millions of African Americans affected by the 1857 ruling, which held that they were not citizens but rather private property that could not be taken from their owners without due process, might disagree.
But there you have it, folks. Surely, somewhere in a corner office of the Kraft Foods headquarters, a CEO is gleefully watching his stock go through the roof.
. . . So Well Read. . . 