Gallup Captures How Easily Republicans Change Their Minds Contrary to Factual Evidence
MUNCIE, Indiana – According to a recent Gallup Poll, when George W. Bush was President in 2006, 70% of Americans wanted the Federal Government to provide health care insurance to them. Mainly because the Middle Class became the working poor after NAFTA was signed and companies left our shores for cheaper labor markets and countries where they could pollute freely. We hadn’t reached Wall Street’s meltdown caused by years of financial deregulation by GWB, but it was coming.
Then Senator Barack Obama promised “Hope and Change”, and said he would deliver health care to struggling Americans and won big in 2008 – even a red state like Indiana voted for him.
From one of President Obama’s speeches:
For a long time, America was the only advanced economy in the world where health care was not a right, but a privilege. We spent more, we got less. We left tens of millions of Americans without the security of health insurance. By the time the financial crisis hit, most folks’ premiums had more than doubled in about a decade. About one in 10 Americans who got their health care through their employer lost that coverage. So the health care system was not working. And the rising costs of health care burdened businesses and became the biggest driver of our long-term deficits.
Muncie Voice has pointed out these statistics time and time again. Let’s reiterate, “American was the ONLY advanced economy in the world where health care was not a right, but a privilege.”
This is a fact, folks. It’s not an opinion or a belief – FACT. Meaning, there is really no need to argue pro or con, left or right, liberal view versus conservative view – FACT.
The reason Muncie Voice was created in 2011 was the gross negligence of our Fourth Estate, a free and independent press, to report facts to the public. Especially in Indiana with Gannett News owning four (4) newspapers in Indianapolis, Muncie, Lafayette and Richmond. Hoosiers have been sold propaganda for years by the biggest newspaper chain in America.
Back to President Obama’s speech about his personal experience:
Everywhere I went as I ran for President back in 2007, 2008, everyplace I’ve gone as President, I would hear stories from folks just like you of insurers that denied a child coverage because he had a preëxisting condition like asthma; of cancer survivors that had to choose between their home or their health care; of small businesses who wanted to do the right thing by their employees but had seen their insurance premiums go up so high that they just couldn’t do it anymore.
The Gallup poll shows exactly where public opinion was in 2006 and 2007. It was reaching its peak at 70%. But, check out what happened during the election year in 2008 – it started to decline a bit. Why?
It became an issue during the campaign trail and the media, owned by republicans, started talking about it, negatively.
President Obama delivered on his campaign promise and the Affordable Care Act is now law and working in states that cooperated. However, once he became president and passed ACA, free market libertarian billionaires with the last name, Koch, stepped forward spending billions in negative ads with corporate owned media and hired mouthpieces (politicians) to fight the ACA.
These mouthpieces now hold governor seats in 23 red states and our congress in the nation’s capital. Their goal for 2016 is to buy THE seat in the People’s House.
The Koch’s and Big Insurance have spent billions in negative ads and with the help of mouthpieces like Rep. Luke Messer and others across the country, they’ve been spouting negativity. The mouthpieces in Washington have voted to repeal the ACA over 50 times, and they even shut down our federal government after losing the 2012 election. This cost us taxpayers around $50 billion dollars. They’ve used their network of conservative media to communicate to the base of traditional republicans and expand that base using “dog-whistle politics” on Fox News made famous by Ronald Reagan’s use of “Welfare Queens” and “Young Bucks”. It worked for Roger Ailes while he managed Reagan’s campaign, so why shouldn’t he use it as President of Fox News.
And, it’s worked brilliantly on unsuspecting Teapublicans and others who watch Fox News.
Even Gallup identifies how one party’s ideological beliefs can change despite evidence to the contrary:
Yet, a majority of Americans continue to say they disapprove of it, even as the ACA is making progress toward its stated goal of expanding health insurance coverage. That more than half of Americans think it is not the government’s role to make sure Americans have healthcare coverage suggests that opposition to the ACA may be centered more on its philosophical underpinnings, rather than on the specifics of its actual provisions and outcomes.
Why are republicans so easily persuaded by the media and their own negatively speaking politicians? They say they don’t trust politicians, but for some reason they trust their own. Does this make them bigger fools?
The US Chamber, Big Insurance, and Koch brothers have spent billions in negative ads and buying up political mouthpieces to repeal a law they don’t want because it’s working, and bringing down healthcare costs. However, they don’t want any government – they want to eliminate it and privatize all functions of our democratic government.
If only President Obama had gone one step further and opted for Universal Health Care for all Americans. All the billions wasted on health insurance could be used to help prevent diseases, cut out the public and private sector from having to offer insurance for employees, and improve the health and well-being of all Americans.
Maybe the 2016 presidential candidates will have this on their agenda and prove to the American people that we deserve exactly what we wanted in 2006. Or, will we continue to be led like sheep to believe exactly the opposite of our self interests?
One things for sure, the Oligarchs will continue spending billions of dollars in misinformation and propaganda campaigns because they’ve worked so far. It took less than four (4) years to get over half of Americans to completely flip-flop their opinions without a shred of evidence to support their case.
