Have you ever noticed that after putting your iPod down for a second, when you pick it up the headphones are twisted into a complicated jumble that takes several minutes to untangle? It seems as though, all of the sudden, you have to spend more time fixing this issue than you had spent enjoying it and you can’t help but ask, “how did I get here?”

As a Democrat, I ask myself that question pretty often these days. It seems that we can’t put forth a policy or assert a position without it coming back tangled, twisted, and in a very different form than that which we had submitted.

Let’s look at the issue very much on the public agenda today: health care reform. This summer, the content of the Health Care Bill supported by Obama was made public. Elements such as required coverage for preventative care, lowered insurance costs, and a public option could be seen by Americans of all parties as our President’s attempt to provide our nation with equal health care. Discussion, debate, and contention are to be expected. But health care equality is not on the rocks because Republicans have asserted sound arguments rooted in evidence. Let’s follow the breadcrumb trail back to our first proposal for health care equality early in Summer 2009, shall we? We find the evil witch Sarah Palin jumbling up our quotes and getting her supporters tangled up in threats of “socialism” and “death panels.” Even when it seems like what Glenn Beck says can whisk the Republican Party out of its misery, come midnight, he turns out to be more of a pumpkin than a carriage. The Democratic Party put forth a plan to equip men and women of all income levels with health care, but is instead exhausting important discussion time reversing ludicrous claims asserted by Conservative news-generators like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Instead of communicating a message of equality and accessible health care, we are countering men and women who shout in town halls that we plan to prematurely force old people to the grave. How did we get here?

Republicans are obviously at the epicenter of this whole problem, and the force and speed with which their blather travels has created an apocalyptic image of Obama’s health care plan. A party of few thinkers and fewer ideas, they feel the need to make up for this shortcoming by generating overblown statements and sometimes-outright lies. Indeed, the Democrats share some of the blame because they could not deflect the absurd statements delivered by Right Wing extremists and move on from them. But the media is also at fault. Outrageous statements by political pundits and certain Republican leaders needn’t be disseminated to the degree that they have been. In a quest for maximum ratings, news organizations spent more airtime relaying the factually invalid messages of Bill O’Reilly than the goals concretely outlined in Obama’s Health Care plan.

As such, the Republicans have set the agenda for debate about Health Care—and many other hot-button issues today–in this nation. Extreme, false declarations are rewarded by increased airtime and a readjustment of the public focus to what the Republicans have to say. The Democratic Party spent a whole lot of time this summer debunking Republican claims, but that time could have been put to better use. We could have been fairly discussing the long-term advantages of required preventative care but instead we were engaging in shouting matches at Town Hall Meetings. We could have been explaining to moderates that the bill will not increase our taxes; instead we were reminding the public that we are not socialists.

The time has passed for us to continue to unconsciously legitimize the Right when it is very, very wrong. We need to be direct and we need to allow extreme statements from Republicans to sputter and fade in their own time; an issue that is not granted attention will not last very long in the public eye. First, let’s not allow the media to be an empty vessel that can be filled to the brim with Republican blather. Second, when extreme statements are released, they should be ignored, as we have a message to promote and that deserves our focus. Anyway, with all the world-changing we’ve got to do, who has time to deal with untangling wires?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 2:51 am and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.