Joe Conason: The Right-Wingers Who Cried Wolf

[marmar]

from Truthdig:




The Right-Wingers Who Cried Wolf

Posted on Mar 25, 2010
By Joe Conason


Listening to right-wing talk radio on the day after Congress passed health care reform, Bill O’Reilly was stunned. To him, the hosts and the callers sounded “crazed” as they shrieked about “the end of the world, we’re socialist now, we have to take the country back.” Maybe the Fox News host hasn’t been listening, but there has been plenty of crazy in the air now for many months on his network and elsewhere on the airwaves.

Going too far for O’Reilly is going very far indeed, but the madness of the conservative reaction has yet to abate. His friend and colleague Glenn Beck declared that health care reform means “the end of prosperity in America forever ... the end of America as you know it.”

Bill Hemmer, another Fox host who probably needs medication, has suggested that the legislation will send Americans who don’t have health insurance to prison. The Washington Times editorial page compared the bill to the Black Death, and The Drudge Report put up a headline suggesting that its passage is the equivalent of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

On radio, Rush Limbaugh, the past master of extremist chatter, told his listeners that the bill is an “utter disaster” that represents “the destruction of America as founded.” With its new regulation of insurance companies, he warned, this reform will inexorably lead to the destruction of the private health care industry and bring down the health care system, because the real plan is for government to take over all medical care. Lesser wingnuts in print and on the air scream that this bill means government will take over the entire economy and control everything we do—and even that the costs of health care will somehow result in “global Armageddon.” ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_wingers_who_cried_wolf_20100324/

[polichick]

1. The Henny Penny Syndrome. nt

[depakid]

2. The administration and the leadership in Congress missed a golden opportunity

to relegate Republicans back to the fringe for a generation (or more) with this watered down legislation.

On the one hand- the howls on the right will as Conason says, be seen as crying wolf- on the other hand, most people won't see much change from the status quo over the following two election cycles.

Best one can hope for is that they've learned at least a little something going into the next rounds of reform.