There is no more misleading imagery than the ad run by Democrats in which a Paul Ryan-looking figure throws Granny off a cliff due to Medicare cuts:
The ad has it exactly opposite to reality. Republican proposals would keep Medicare the same for people already in the system or 10 years away from entering the system. Nothing would affect Granny, but restructuring would save Medicare for future generations while easing the national debt burden.
There is something that will kill Medicare, Democrats’ insistence on doing nothing or relying on tax increases. Don’t take my word for it, take Barack Obama’s word for it:
And what I’ve tried to explain to them [Democrats] is, number one, if you look at the numbers, then Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up. I mean, it’s not an option for us to just sit by and do nothing.
Mediscare is an age-old Democratic tactic, but this time it’s different because left as is Medicare goes bankrupt in Granny’s lifetime and bursts a ballooning national debt.
Mediscare no longer is about Granny, it’s about Granny’s grandchildren being saddled with crushing debt.
Prof. Glenn Reynolds, writing in USA Today, summed up the meaning of the Ryan pick:
Ryan is the expert on the often Byzantine complexities of the federal budget. His budget proposal last year, though rejected by Democrats in the Senate, represented a serious effort to rein in runaway spending. The only cogent criticism, really, was that it didn’t go far enough.
In fact, the math shows our spending is unsustainable. Nothing can save it: Not higher taxes, not lower interest rates on federal borrowing, not financial jiggery-pokery from the Fed. If we continue on this path, the result will be disaster: We’ll be Greece, with nuclear weapons.
Ryan represents the adult in the room on fiscal issues, yet Democrats now are salivating to use Ryan’s nomination as a Mediscare tactic in states with high senior citizen percentages.
But this time it is different because of our precarious fiscal position. This is not your great grandmother’s Mediscare.
The Democratic Party electoral strategy in 2012 asks Grandparents to do something which is not in the natural order, to throw their grandchildren off a fiscal cliff.
Once grandparents understand what they are being asked to do, they will revolt against the Democrats’ revolting electoral strategy.
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I hope you are right. I know that my retired parents will vote for Ø. They are very bright people, but they just can’t acknowledge that the party of JFK is no more, and that the math doesn’t add up.
If your parents are as bright as you say they are, then they understand the math doesn’t work. It’s not rocket science to know that running $1 trillion deficits year after year which has created a debt/GDP ratio that now exceeds 100% puts us farther down the road to financial ruin.
Obama has shown no leadership, no courage, no vision for even trying to fix the mess that both parties created. Republicans at least acknowledge the problem and the errors of the past and they now want to try to be responsible about fixing things. Yet your “bright” parents want to stick their head in the sand and pretend everything’s magically going to work out. Your allegedly “bright” parents are part of the problem.
It’s going to be addressed one way or the other. It can be fixed rationally through the political process, which Obama refuses to do, or we will have a debt crisis and it gets fixed that way. And if we have a debt crisis, the misery and hardship will be multiples worse than if we fix it politically.
Societal breakdown and civil unrest become possibilities. Ask any Russian how much fun it was for about 10 years after the USSR collapsed under the weight of its debt burden.
I can see the RNC ad: Granny is walking her grandkids over to edge of the cliff. Below them is the great expanse of Washington D.C. Obama in the background says, “You can have all this if you just push them over the cliff. You know what you have to do to save yourself. There is no other way.” Then granny knees Obama and tells him to “shove off the cliff your self.”
I’ve seen polling…over a period of a year or more…showing that support for the Ryan plan is strong among seniors.
I think that most seniors actually DO get this, but there are not a few who simply need to hear the facts. Now is the time for that.
NOooobody really thinks this can go without being addressed. There are sound-bites galore of MOST Deemocrats giving the looming fiscal crisis lip service, and those need to be shown early and often.
The “throwing granny over the cliff” meme is also vulnerable in its excess. Only a very small cohort of Americans find that credible, and they are hopeless at any rate.
As congenital Eeyore Mark Steyn has noted, there is not enough money in all the world to meet our future commitments.
So this presents us with a great, cutting issue to present as part of a reformation; live in reality, or parish in delusion.
Take Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, or Obama’s Road to Perdition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=myYEb15AyPk
Play this, every 1/2 hour of prime-time, every day.
Obama campaign strategist–Ministry of Truth, Department of Media Messaging Chief Chuck F. Todd–was on Morning Joe this morning.
The goal: Make the name Paul Ryan synonymous with “cutting Medi-care”.
You say Paul Ryan, I think of granny wasting away in a ditch.
Of note, the normally giddy and cocky Todd was very somber, very serious. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say very frightened.
RE: “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say very frightened.”
Frightened? I doubt frightened describes their mindset right now, but certainly sober and serious. Everyone recalls just 24 months ago when the residents of the White House thought life was a huge lark. Golf, parties, servants, private jets, power – good times had by one-and-all. Now, on the horizon, there appears throngs of peasants with pitchforks and torches! Hopefully true:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
[…] Legal Insurrection: Dem electoral strategy – convince Grandparents to throw Grandchildren off fiscal cliff […]
With a 52% approval for Paul Ryan from the seniors, I think quite a few understand what is going on. I hope Romney and Ryan will hammer that the fact that seniors can keep their Medicare as the democrats lie non stop.
Personally, I want freedom even when I am a senior. I don’t want to be forced into Medicare as much as I do not want to be forced in Obamacare.
It wasn’t even two weeks past that it was reported that the Obama campaigns $100 million in campaign ads, 75% of which were negative and it has failed to move voters…
So Much for a “Different Kind of Campaign” – Team Obama Continues Defense of Indefensible Ad
August 10, 2012
http://www.crnc.org/2012/08/10/so-much-for-a-different-kind-of-campaign-team-obama-continues-defense-of-indefensible-ad/
Nice cliff. Is that The Hudson?
Yep . I Think I was right . The group is NY based .
To the disliker -go hike the Hudson Valley up from NJ . Spectacular.
My daddy was also in the tank for Obama, and he believed every nasty thing Howell Raines ever wrote about Dick Cheney. I don’t know if I’ll be able to turn him, or not. Some people do shut their minds, and he’s already told me I’m insane.
But there’s my brother, and sister, and mother, and we vote, too.
Also, my daddy understands budgetary chicanery, so I’m going to try to get him to look at this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxMZ1WdINs
Paul Ryan is a numbers guy, well-spoken, well-prepared, and courteous. Paul Ryan is actually capable of delivering on some of the promises Obama made.
Suggestion: ask him: why he thinks you would lie to him about this?
Also, ask him to keep an open mind, and to cut back on or stop watching the TV/news for a little while.
From experience I’ve noticed that many of the die-hard elderly are trusting what they hear on the airwaves. (It’s as though these people are their family, or perceived as more loving…..maybe because they seem to be so CARING and COMPASSIONATE….) Why they trust those seemingly sincere, friendly faces over family members who are just trying to cut through the propaganda is beyond me. But there is hope; never give in, as Churchill said!!!
Be kind, gentle, loving. And honest. It can get through – I’ve seen it!! My leftie-filled family are beginning to see the light. I’ve already had two (60something age-wise) who are DETERMINED to vote for Romney and get Obama out – and the one is making sure her 90-something mother is registered and going to the polls!!)
I was the lone voice crying in the wilderness. So…….never give in. Just smile, hug, and continue to point them to the facts!!
Good luck! It’s worth the effort, if you can prevail. 🙂
I doubt the Republicans or any of their PACs would make such a commercial, seeing as how that is such a gutter-level visual. Unfortunately.
It could and would be very effective, IMHO.
Doctors did a version of your counter-video idea back when ObamaCare (or is it ObamaTax?) went in. That never got much play, but was a great counter to the granny-off-the-cliff imagery and lies.
Here it is, called The Whole Truth.
In this version, Obama is throwing Granny off the cliff.
It’s too long, but the premise is very sound, the message clear, and the imagery effective to counter to that heinous Dem commercial.
Republicans need to do a short-and-sweet rebuttal, along the lines you describe – and perhaps pointing to this doctors’ video, to cut the O2 from this meme before it is allowed to breathe new life.
[…] Professor Jacobson at LI gets it right when he says that the ad showing Ryan shoving granny off a cliff would be more accurate if granny was pushing a stroller with a baby in it off the cliff. The undisputed King of All Internet Snark, Dave Burge (IowaHawk) deadpans: You know what will end Medicare as we know it? Medicare as we know it. […]
I want to see the Romney/Ryan team take the same commercial and have R/R push the wheelchair over the cliff … except in this case it’s Obama/Biden in the wheelchair. 🙂
(Maybe they should do a commercial with similar visuals and have Romney and Ryan at the bottom of the cliff catching grandma, with words to the effect that that was the Democrat party throwing grandma.)
I hope Ryan campaigns in Florida with his parents and their retired friends.
Alinskyrod and Gutter:
“It is a pick that is meant to thrill the most strident voices in the Republican Party, but it’s one that should trouble everyone else,” Axelrod said on ABC about Ryan. “He’s the guy who’s the architect of a plan to end Medicare as we know it and turn it into a voucher program and ship thousands of dollars of costs onto senior citizens.”
Things got heated over on CBS, where Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom and Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter often interrupted each other during the discussion on Face the Nation.
Fehrnstrom charged that Obama’s campaign has been mired in negative campaigning, saying the Democrats have offered “50 shades of mud” to voters. Cutter argued that criticism of Ryan’s Medicare plan is not negative campaigning.
“It would be the end of Medicare as we know it,”Cutter said.
What these two, dare I say PEOPLE know, is..
Ryan’s Medicare plan would allow those 55 and younger to opt out of the government-run health insurance program and purchase private insurance with a federal subsidy. His proposal would not change the way Medicare would work for seniors currently enrolled in the program.
Ryan also has a different Medicare plan that he crafted with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and introduced in December. The key difference is that it would give seniors the choice of staying in Medicare as it is currently configured or getting health insurance through private companies.
They do not care, for your granny, granpa NOR theirs. All they care for are Rules for Radicals..
Having been involed with the local T party ,been to all the rallys from day 1, most of us are seniors. This past Christmas ,SOCO donated significant toys to a local Community Center serving the poorer side of Pueblo. To think seniors put their desires over kids is wrong. This dem view of Seniors is insane ! The question is ,given the inescapable math ,where are responsible dems?
<blockquote.The question is ,given the inescapable math ,where are responsible dems?
Answer: there are none left. See this article – …Lieberman, the Last Moderate Democrat.
[Times like this I wish there was an “edit” or “delete” option! 😉 ]
Should read:
Answer: there are none left. See this article – …Lieberman, the Last Moderate Democrat.
While your analysis is correct, I am less sanguine about your assessment of what the senior voters will actually do. My concern is that many (too many) of them will mentally kick the can down the road and pull the level for Obama anyway, thinking that if they can keep Medicare working as-is for them, then their grandkids can deal with it in later elections.
In my vocation, I interface with seniors a lot, and you’d be amazed at how many of them admit that they just want the status quo maintained until they die, then say they don’t really care what happens after that.
I think that conservative-leaning seniors are going to vote Republican and liberal-leaning ones are going to vote Democrat and the Medicare issue is hardly going to sway anyone. Decades of political habits are hardly going to be changed now.
I dont disagree with you. Alot of people are hunkered down in their bubble hoping to ride out the storm. Point: Most recognize there is a coming storm. Most worry we are at the begining of that storm. Most realize if we dont do something ,it will be bad. 4 years ago at 62 years old I figured I would be dead by the time the crap hits the fan. At 66 I know ,barring a change of course ,it will happen soon. That aformentioned bubble will be blown away. Heres hoping your seniors start to come out of denial.
The pro-Obama retirees I talk to are singularly uninformed. They believe the commercials they see and the spin in the media. Their information is an accumulation from five decades. They are big on the NYTimes, Time magazine, and NBC news.
I’ve been adamantly told that the economy is picking up, that unemployment is lifting, that things are getting better but GWB created a terrible mess, that Republicans are going to destroy Medicare, that there is a “war on women” (singularly convincing to elderly women who can remember when the laws did in fact discriminate against them), and that Obama is pro-Israel. At the slightest disagreement with these people, rage and anger starts building immediately and their brains shut off.
Paul Ryan’s mother could be featured in a series of ads, speaking “truth to power” to her fellow Floridians. She’d be angry that while Obama stole from Medicare, Democrats lied about her grandson’s plan.
“My son’s plan secured Medicare for those 55 and over. He also made a plan for our grandchildren, while Obama admits he is throwing them over the cliff.”
Perhaps the “sheeple” will finally get the message that they’ve been lied to by their Democrat handlers. Seniors should get it, and even the youth should get that Obama stated Medicare will go bankrupt … that IS his plan.
The constant bold lies from Democrats must be highlighted. The media can’t cover them all up.
Saturday, I posted a parody video of the lows the Dems will go to attack Ryan.
I had forgotten about the Dem. ad here, and now I realize that the lows I imagined had already been surpassed.
A constant theme of the Democrats is that Republicans want you to die. Expect more of the same to come.
I’ve handled a lot of Medicare issues for family. I just ordered a low air loss bed for $365, as good or better than the local medical supply place has, which is basically run by the medical group, which is basically run by the local “cabal” (in my view).
The Medicare way is to rent me a similar item for $700/month for three months … then it is the patient’s. My ordered replacement is not covered by Medicare .. but when Medicare covered the first one, it was so easy to just go through the system, and get approval (to gouge Medicare).
There is such massive fraud in DC, with so many players (right down to the local level) getting rich from the frauds … it’s hard to keep focused on a message that will sink in. But there is plenty of fuel to fire people up.
Democrats long ago quit being the party of the little people, (if they ever were). They are the party of the connected people. Solyndra, GM, Jon Corzine, Franklin Raines …. but also right down to the local medical device suppliers, everyone gets their piece of the “action”. It’s the Chicago Way.
Taking on the connected, and advocating for actual cost savings, would be a bold move. I seem to recall Obama promising to keep lobbyists out of his administration. heh
“In fact, the math shows our spending is unsustainable.”
This is language that the squishier, environmentally conscious (and smugly proud of it), liberal leaning soccer moms can understand.
Talk about fiscal matters in terms of sustainability … and refer to Ryan’s plans as “green.”
Oh, and mock the Democrats’ scare tactics with merciless parodies.
Borrow the Dems’ “push Granny off the cliff” theme and do a campy, even-further-over-the-top, take, ridiculing their scare tactics while making your own argument.
LukeHandCool (who, to hit home with seniors, would have Granny screaming out, “Jethro, Mr. Drysdale, you can’t do this to me!!”)
They aren’t just going to throw their grandchildren off the cliff, they’ll be throwing the whole country off the cliff! Greece, Spain, Italy lie below – paralyzed with 20% permanent unemployment, government unions demonstrating in the streets, standards of living plunging,…
The GOP ticket has their work cut out for them, though, given that the lower half of the income scale pays a mere 3.6% of the federal individual income tax bill. (That’s when you account for all of the handouts, tax credits, etc. that they get.) BUT, every prez election cycle we put off having this “choice” election, the more people will be free riders and the fewer paying the tax bills. Better do it now rather than later. It could be our last chance.
My thought: the GOP ticket should promise that budget cuts will be across the board for all domestic discretionary federal spending. Each special interest shares equally in the cuts. Note that these beneficiaries NEVER paid 15.3% of their income for these programs, unlike Social Security and Medicare. Those recipients have paid in at that rate since 1984 when the Greenspan Commission worked out its “compromise” to “fix” SS & Medicare. That’s a long 28 years of forced taxation.
Those recipients deserve to rank higher on the budget-cutting totem pole than “free riders”. Now, SS & Medicare are Ponzi Schemes, just like Madoff’s “investments” were. Treat them the same way the judge handled the investors in Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme: you only can get back at most what payroll tax you paid in.
The GOP should run a spoof of this ad with Granny, at the edge of the cliff with an Obama double about to push her over, looking out over the scenery and declaring,
“I can see Greece from this cliff!”
Then she gets out of the wheelchair and fights back.
I can’t recall who it was by name but a visitor was writing article or articles on Americans and the USA. He said the one thing them is that if something doens’t work, Americans are not afraid tory something else. they have no “Class” structure that makes them bound to the past.
I think that is true. If wecan be “re-libertied” if that is a word, we can solve these budget/medical issues.
[…] Jacobson is quite happy with the choice and makes this important point in a post from this morning: Ryan represents the adult in the room on fiscal issues, yet Democrats now are salivating to use […]
[…] to be borne by the next generation. They understand that they’re basically being asked to throw their grandchildren off the cliff. When Rep. Ryan’s plan was passed by the House of Representatives in 2011, its greatest […]
[…] Also: Dem electoral strategy – convince Grandparents to throw Grandchildren off fiscal cliff. […]