Dick Armey: Obama will hype up ‘outbreak of swine flu’ to get ‘bed-wetters’ to support [HC] reform" [View All]

[TomCADem]

In August 2009, Dick Armey was actively trying to spread the right wing talking point that swine flu was over-hyped, which was followed by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh encouraring their listerners to ignore the government's warnings. Now, this same media is now attacking the President for not doing enough PR to counter the misinformation that was spread. Amazing.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/18/armey-flu-bed-wetters/

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Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who is currently one of the leading opponents of health care reform as the head of FreedomWorks, is not above telling lies in his quest to derail President Obama’s reform efforts. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Armey went further than usual, positing a paranoid conspiracy theory about how Obama will push reform through Congress:

Mr Armey, 69, predicted that the “grassroots” backlash against what he called Mr Obama’s “hostile government takeover of a sixth of the US economy” would cause the reform to fail spectacularly. But he predicted that supporters of reform would attempt to win over the “bed-wetters caucus” – a group of wavering lawmakers who spanned both parties, he said – with a fear campaign in the autumn.

“In September or October there will be a hyped up outbreak of the swine flu which they’ll say is as bad as the bubonic plague to scare the bed-wetters to vote for healthcare reform,” said Mr Armey. “That is the only way they can push something on to the American people that the American people don’t want.”

Armey also told the FT that FreedomWorks does not “recommend” that conservatives disrupt town halls, but the organization’s president has encouraged activists to be “aggressive” while their vice president has refused to try to “calm down” the angry protesters.

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