Scared yet?
Amused as I am that this political flyer arrived more than a week after the election (and it isn’t the only one) I am sharing it as an example of crude fearmongering by Republicans. It’s a bit more entertaining, but representative of ones I’ve been receiving for months now. But the facts of the case run just about opposite the flyer.
For example, runaway deficit spending in times of peace and prosperity has been a Republican hallmark since Reagan. And do people even realize that they have been paying lower taxes under Obama? The only people who need to worry about “Higher Taxes” are the ones who will be affected by the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts for the very rich. (And they needn’t worry; their newly-elected servants will prevent that from coming to pass.)
“Government-run health care”… I wish. Around the rest of the civilized world, single-payer health care gives better results for less money. Naturally the bastard-monster of the reform law we passed last year (which contained a number of Republican poison pills) won’t be nearly as good.
“Taxpayer funded abortions” is simply a lie. And “High Unemployment” is certainly related to the economic crash that began before Bush left office. It had something to do with the financial markets that ran away like an engine with no regulator. That Obama hasn’t been able, against unrelenting Republican resistance, to fix in two years what it took Republicans eight years to break, is hardly surprising.
Basically it’s just a lot of scare words. Hey! They left out gays and gun control. Maybe that’s another flyer. (Actually, when you open this flyer, it mentions both those issues and more, with helpful statistics from the Heritage foundation.) With reliable information like that, who wouldn’t be motivated to vote? We’re informed that we should be scared. “Don’t be tricked by the Obama-Pelosi-Giannoulias-Halvorson radical agenda!”
And of course some heroically unflattering pictures of all the people they don’t like.
I think this says a lot about the mental age of the people at whom it is aimed. Simple images, scary catch-phrases. It’s very depressing that they feel lying is a legitimate way to gain power. Whatever happened to honesty and concern for the general good?
For the past 18 months here (where I live in NY state) we have had a really good congressman. Naturally I don’t agree with him on everything, but he went to great lengths to explain his positions and to keep in touch with his constituents. For the past few months he has been one of Karl Rove’s primary targets, and his opponent was also backed by the tea-baggers. Rove arranged for millions to be poured into the race, with the inevitable result. So now we will have a representative one of whose stated prime goals is to repeal health care reform. And of course he is going to cut taxes while at the same time cutting the deficit.
Well, at least the phone calls have stopped.
When I hear Cons say that I always want to try and sell them a perpetual-motion energy machine…
There is a third part of that equation that you’re leaving out – spending.
There, fixed that for you. Because we both know that Cons will not cut either of those and they will never name any infrastructure or social support program that they’d be willing to cut, either.
True, which is part of my problem with conservatives.
Flyers like that one might scare me…but for all the “wrong” reasons. That is, if they scare me, it’s not because I believe them, but because I believe they might persuade people to vote against their own interests.
I don’t know where to put this, George, but this is really scary.