And they have to make it as frightening as possible. From the Daily Caller [Emphasis mine]:
President Barack Obama’s aides have poll-tested new phrases and themes for their “Mediscare” strategy, which seeks to persuade Medicare-reliant seniors to vote against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the critical swing-state of Florida.The Medicare reform plan pushed by Romney is “a dangerous plan to strip seniors of their Medicare guarantee,” said Ben LaBolt, press secretary for Obama for America, said Aug. 16.“These plans would give seniors on Medicare a much worse deal that members of Congress have,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Democrats’ top-ranked member of the House Budget Committee, said during the Aug. 16 press-conference with LaBolt.
You hear that?
Romney’s plan is “dangerous” to seniors and it offers them a “worse deal” than they had before. On the authority of President Obama’s press secretary.
This is a tactic that the Obama campaign has used before in order to gain the approval of the American people for bad policies. Remember how many jobs would be “created or saved” by the stimulus? I imagine there is some leeway on what exactly constitutes a job that was “saved.”
Or perhaps you can recall the degree of specificity with which the Democrats proposed Obamacare to the American people:
The battle to define medicare and whose plan will shape its future is in full swing. The Romney and Obama campaigns have recently released ads making their respective cases, and there will certainly be more to come.
If history is any guide, you can bet we’re going to see more puffed up “Mediscare” rhetoric from the Obama campaign that isn’t quantifiable in any meaningful sense.
The Romney campaign’s success will likely be based on whether they can adequately refute the misinformation of the Obama campaign, and distill the important details of Ryan’s fairly complicated budget into something comprehensible to the average American.
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