HEALTH CARE AND THE POLITICS OF FEAR

As you may have seen, the President addressed a joint session of Congress last night on the issue of health care reform.

There are lots of places to go to get reaction to the speech, including Instapundit, RealClearPolitics, the National Review or Weekly Standard, and many more. I suspect the folks on the Left are pleased, the folks on the Right are not. Of course, what really matters is how the folks in Middle America react, not just to the speech (which most probably did not watch), but more importantly to the actions taken or proposed by lawmakers. Just the possibility of action has helped propel many thousands of people into these town hall meetings and tea party demonstrations (although I think they are also motivated by other actions taken by the President, especially when it comes to the massive spending programs and government interventions into the economy).

In politics, emotion is the key, not reason. Most people are motivated to take time away from the business of living to address politics only when they are faced with an issue or issues that generate fear of loss...loss of life, loss of income, loss of respect. Want to generate political passion? Tell someone an illegal immigrant is going to take away his job, or an overseas competitor. Put a face on the issue, especially a strange, foreign looking face, and you can generate some heat. Want to get people out to a demonstration or a town hall? Tell them someone from the government is going to take away their health benefits or their Social Security benefits. Want to get people riled up? Tell them the man in the White House is doing things that will make it easier for terrorists to kill them, or their sons or daughters serving in the military.

This stuff works from both the Left and the Right. "Bush lied, people died", remember? Keep it simple by making your political opponent appear to be evil, because most people prefer to look at the world in black and white, rather than shades of gray. Thus, George W. Bush is not just a political opponent, but an evil mass murderer, responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to secure the oil fields for his buddies. He even arranged 9/11 to gin up the political support for his money grab. Barack Obama is not just a political opponent, but an evil acolyte of communists and Black radicals from Chicago, who arranged to get paperwork done to cover up the fact that he wasn't even born in the United States. George W. Bush is a Fascist, an enemy of goodness and freedom, making moves to feather the nests of his evil, capitalist robber baron friends. Barack Obama is a Socialist, using the techniques of the commie radicals from the Sixties to seduce Americans into ceding their political and economic freedoms.

This is the way to win elections and political power. I still believe they will fail to pass anything significant in the way of health insurance reform, or if they pass something, it will be more hot air than substance. But if they do pass something significant, like a mandate to buy insurance coverage, or a law against denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, or a government insurance option for all, then I expect the outrage to go into high gear, and this will make a GOP resurgence a near certainty.