"The real goal of all those anti-Obamacare ads"

[applegrove]

The real goal of all those anti-Obamacare ads

By Greg Sargent at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/03/21/the-real-goal-of-all-those-anti-obamacare-ads/

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Officials of the organization say their effort is not confined to hammering away at President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.. They are also trying to present the law as a case study in government ineptitude to change the way voters think about the role of government for years to come.

“We have a broader cautionary tale,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. “The president’s out there touting billions of dollars on climate change. We want Americans to think about what they promised with the last social welfare boondoggle and look at what the actual result is.”

Leaders of the effort say it has great appeal to the businessmen and businesswomen who finance the operation and who believe that excess regulation and taxation are harming their enterprises and threatening the future of the country. The Kochs, with billions in holdings in energy, transportation and manufacturing, have a significant interest in seeing that future government regulation is limited.

This is exactly the case Dems are making against the AFP’s attacks. The real purpose of the Dem strategy is to create a framework for a broader argument about the true goals and priorities of the actual GOP policy agenda. It’s about tapping into a sense that the economy is rigged against ordinary Americans, and in favor of the one percent, and dramatizing that the GOP’s economic agenda would preserve that status quo, blocking any government policies designed to address stagnant mobility and soaring inequality. Or that, as Jonathan Chait puts it, the GOP has “built a policy agenda around plutocracy,” and its primary ”organizing purpose is to safeguard the economic interests of the very rich.”



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