Your GOP August Talking Points
Get ready to hear these a lot on the cable news next month: Republican Minority Leader John Boehner issued his members their August Recess Talking Points. They're a little familiar, and a lot dishonest.
First: health care. Boehner gave everyone a copy of the hilarious chart that's already been presented as an actual piece of policy analysis on Fox News. Everyone already had a copy of the chart of course, but you can never be too careful. What we love about the GOP's "Scary Democratic Health Care Reform is Scary and Complicated: The Home Game" chart is not that it's inaccurate (it pretends there is one "House Democrats' Health Care Plan" when there are like four of them being worked out simultaneously, which is why there hasn't been a vote yet) or ill-advised (the current health care system is just as complicated and much worse for everyone), it's that it is not even that scary-complicated. Look, the big gray bar goes directly from "Health Care Providers" to "Health Insurance Exchange" to "Consumers." How hard is that? All the other agencies and arrows and words and colors are kinda extraneous. This looks like a fine plan to us!
But here is the line your local Republican congressman will use:
"During a recession that has seen the loss of 6.5 million jobs, Democrats propose a government takeover of health care that will lead to increased costs, fewer jobs, higher taxes and less health coverage," according to the GOP talking points.
Right. 6.5 million jobs have been lost, but "a government takeover of health care" will lead to "less health coverage"? We don't think they understand how things work!
Oh, but that is not all! Did you know that Barack Obama wants to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and bus the terrorists to your child's school?
"To fulfill a campaign promise, President Obama ordered that the detention facility be closed," one bullet in the packet said. "Now the President has missed the deadline he promised the American people for a plan to relocate the detainees and has kicked the deadline down the road."
Republican leaders, in another bullet, raise the question: "The more than 200 terrorists left at Guantanamo Bay represent the worst of the worst. How will closing Guantanamo make us safer?"
Here is what we love about those two talking points: they are criticizing Obama for missing the deadline to close Guantanamo, like he promised he'd do, and they are outraged and shocked that he wants to close Guantanamo.
But yes, you will hear some of these sentences word-for-word on the news, over and over again, in the coming month. So enjoy.