In Any Case, The Goal Is That The Rest Of Us End Up There, Too

Wow — what to make of this: at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government.com, Joel B. Pollak asks, “Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?”

Robert Creamer used to be the leader of Citizen Action/Illinois. He also founded its predecessor, Illinois Public Action, in which Ms. Schakowsky served as Program Director. He runs a political consulting firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, which lists ACORN and the SEIU among its clients and which made $541,000 working for disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

Creamer resigned from Citizen Action/Illinois after the FBI began investigating him for bank fraud and tax evasion at Illinois Public Action. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to five months in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, plus eleven months of house arrest.

While in prison—or “forced sabbatical,” he called it—Creamer wrote a lengthy political manual, Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (Seven Locks Press, 2007).

The book was endorsed by leading Democrats and their allies, including SEIU boss Andy Stern—the most frequent visitor thus far to the Obama White House—and chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, who noted that Creamer’s tome “provides a blueprint for future victories.”

In the book, Creamer draws lessons from decades of experience on the radical left, including the teachings of arch-radical Saul Alinsky, and several episodes from Rep. Schakowsky’s political career. He also lays out a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change,” which includes a ten-point plan for foisting universal health care on the American people in 2009:

• “We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”
• “We must create a national consensus that the health care system is in crisis.”
• “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”
• “We need to systematically forge relationships with large sectors of the business/employer community.”
• “We need to convince political leaders that they owe their elections, at least in part, to the groundswell of support of [sic] universal health care, and that they face political peril if they fail to deliver on universal health care in 2009.”
• “We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus.”
• “Over the next two years, we must design and organize a massive national field program.”
• “We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community.”
• “We must systematically leverage the connections and resources of a massive array of institutions and organizations of all types.”
• “To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined.”

Creamer adds: “To win we must not just generate understanding, but emotion—fear, revulsion, anger, disgust.”

Democrats have followed Creamer’s plan to the letter. They have claimed our health care system is in crisis despite polls showing the overwhelming majority of Americans are happy with the care they receive. They have—with the help of President Obama—circulated false horror stories about Americans dying for lack of health care and health insurance.

They have targeted the health insurance industry, with Rep. Schakowsky herself promising to “put the private insurance industry out of business,” though it is a top employer in Illinois.

Democrats have cut deals with the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Association, among others. They have brought in the President himself to tell wavering “Blue Dog” Democrats that their re-election chances depend on passing health care reform. They have bused in SEIU members to town hall meetings, and used rabbis and pastors to back health care reform from the pulpit.

They have used a complex, interconnected web of organizations—including HCAN and Organizing For America, the former Obama campaign arm—to whip up support and silence opposition. And they have benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to convince the public to support bills that their representatives have never read themselves.

Creamer wrote his plan in 2006, explicitly proposing that it be carried out in 2009, once a “progressive Democrat is elected President” and once Democrats could count on 60 votes in the Senate. It is curious that Creamer, sitting in prison, could have predicted the details and the timing of President Obama’s legislative agenda so precisely.

Read the whole thing. And if you thought Charlie Gibson dragged his Florsheims on ACORN, you ain’t seen nothing yet waiting for the MSM to avoid having to report this story.

Related: “The next Van Jones? Can the White House explain this one?”

Update: And if ObamaCare isn’t bad enough, “Today, the EPA handed itself complete control of American industry. If cap and trade faiils to pass, Obama can achieve the same thing through the EPA’s new powers as the absolute, unchecked dictator of American life.”