This is smart politics. Dumb on everything else, but smart politics.
The memo, obtained by National Journal, includes a “do’s and don’t’s” list of phrases to use (and not use) when advocating for action on climate change. “Do discuss modernizing and retooling power plants and innovation that will create green jobs…Don’t try to suggest net job increases,” reads one part of the memo.
Ken Berlin, chair of the Energy & Environment Team, a group of national, state and local energy and climate leaders, distributed the memo to his group of about 1,300 people who have organized around these issues for the Obama campaign.
Berlin said the memo was written by the Climate Action Coalition, a new coalition of most major environmental groups. He added the umbrella group is coordinated in part by Kevin Curtis, who is also affiliated with The Climate Reality Project, an advocacy group founded by environmentalist and former Vice President Al Gore. …
More from the 14-page memo’s “do’s and don’t’s” list: “Do inform audiences about the nature of the problem, who is at fault, and what can be done…Don’t debate the increase in electricity rates. Instead pivot to health & clean air message.” Another one says: “Do use ‘cutting carbon pollution from power plants’…Don’t use ‘regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.’ ”
Let’s face it, economic arguments don’t work anymore. If they did, Obama would have lost last year. If they did, then the Gang of 8 Schumio bill would be DOA. It’s as much a disaster for the American worker as Obama’s environmental policies are. The numbers say that pretty much everyone hates what will inevitably happen if it passes — illegal aliens will get government benefits. Everyone knows that, and just about everyone hates it.
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Ninety percent of Republicans opposed it, as did 80 percent of independents and 65 percent of Democrats, suggesting the message could appear in general-election advertising as well as in GOP primaries.
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Nearly two-thirds of nonwhites stood against the idea, as well as 84 percent of whites.
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While college-educated women were the group of whites that most supported extending benefits, 71 percent of them still opposed it.
When asked specifically if legalized immigrants “should be eligible for health care assistance under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, before they become citizens,” the margins narrowed thanks to heightened Democratic, nonwhite, and college-educated support — but respondents still remained hostile to the idea:
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Sixty-nine percent of respondents said no, including 88 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of independents.
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Fifty-four percent of Democrats said no, while 43 percent said legalized noncitizens should be Obamacare-eligible.
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Among nonwhites, extending access to Obamacare polled exactly the same, while whites opposed it 76-20.
Which is why none of that is central to the debate. Instead of hearing about numbers and real impact, which are ultimately abstract, we’re getting emotional arguments designed to play on our better natures, or at least cow us into subservience.
I have to tell you, I’m starting to think that advocacy groups and pundits on the right are going to have to do less analysis and comment and more educational like this video from a couple years ago on the plight of the people of Burma.
Or at least, turn our analysis and comment into something that can be conveyed like that. I’m barely not kidding. That video featuring crazy conspiracy theorist Tila Tequila has gotten hundreds of thousands of views. It may have changed a few minds. If the Consumer Energy Alliance or some other advocacy group could get a hot not-crazy stripper to blast away at Obama’s policies on YouTube, we just might stop him. This is where we are as a country. I’m not saying that that’s a good thing, in fact, it’s a bad thing. I’m just recognizing it as fact.
Look what happened last night in Texas. The majority supports a bill that actually improved standards in women’s health clinics across the state and also banned late-term abortions that most people want banned. The lege was all set to pass it until the Democrats resorted to mob rule. As the mob brought chaos into the orderly democratic process to disrupt and destroy it, the President of the United States (or his minions) tweeted this:
Something special is happening in Austin tonight: http://t.co/RpbnCbO6zw #StandWithWendy
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 26, 2013
That “something special” was disgraceful behavior to stop a bill that a minority of loud-mouths oppose. Barack Obama notably voted three times to defend infanticide when he was in the Illinois senate. Defending butchers is part of his long-time schtick, and as a former (?) community organizer, agitation to achieve ends that politics deny him is very much in his bag of tricks. Obama likes siding with mobs. He sided with the mob in Wisconsin, and he sided with the occupy mob when they were chanting, raping and not bathing. He’s a mob kinda guy.
He’s a ghoul and his allies are ghouls. But we may have to join in these tactics in order to defeat them.
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