Gene Lyons on why calling people stupid racists is an unwise idea

snip

Stage-managed? Absolutely. Somebody like Betsy McCaughey doesn’t invent a falsehood as brazen as the so-called death panels out of nowhere. She’s a professional, a paid propagandist for the right-wing Hudson Institute. Back in 1993, her article “No Exit” in the allegedly liberal (but incompetently edited) New Republic magazine helped sink President Bill Clinton’s health care initiative. Then McCaughey claimed that the Clinton bill made it a crime to buy supplemental insurance or pay your doctor out of pocket. The bill itself said, “Nothing in this act shall be construed as prohibiting . . . an individual from purchasing health-care services.”

But McCaughey’s a poised and superficially attractive woman who performs capably on TV, so why wouldn’t low-information voters get taken in all over again? Particularly after her “death panel” falsehoods got amplified by figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and the supposedly moderate Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.

snip

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

m&s

The people she incites are not. She and Republican leaders are playing on some deep-seated racism that exists among the base.

Believe me ... I spent a day in Jackson, MI canvassing last fall, and the overt racism we encountered was jaw-dropping staggering. When you have people openly telling you that they "wouldn't vote for that filthy n***er" you can bet that these are the people that McCaughey et al. are playing to.