When mockery is no longer possible
In the unlikely event you haven’t already seen it, you owe it to yourself to see the new right-wing ad targeting the AARP for its opposition to privatization of Social Security. In all sincerity, I thought it was a joke liberal bloggers created to make the right look ridiculous. It turns out, the right doesn’t need any help in this regard.
The ad, as you may have heard, is the product of USA Next, a new front group led by the hacks that brought us the Swiftboat Vets and their malicious lies.
Taking its cues from the success of last year’s Swift boat veterans’ campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush’s toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.
The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush’s plan.
One of the fascinating angles here, at least to someone as naïve as me, is the fact that USA Next doesn’t even consider a policy debate on the merits of privatization. The group doesn’t want to convince activists that the AARP is wrong, only that the AARP is evil.
“They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts,” said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. “We will be the dynamite that removes them.”
In Bush’s America, it’s not about policy; it’s about destroying opponents. That’s why the ad doesn’t even mention Social Security, even though that’s the purpose of the effort.
People have to believe that the AARP hates the military and loves gay marriage so we’ll be so filled with rage, we’ll reject their arguments against destroying Social Security. What’s more, the group’s website doesn’t even get around to explaining how or why the AARP is anti-military and pro-gay. It says to “click here for details” — and then offers literally no facts or support for their painfully stupid claims.
One wonders, just as an aside, why the Bush White House was so anxious to win support from these treasonous opponents of traditional values when it came to the president’s Medicare plan in 2003? Maybe Bush had not yet learned of the group’s secret and nefarious hatred of America.
Josh Marshall has all the latest details about USA Next, including updates on the group’s partnership with a slush fund through which pharmaceutical companies make huge donations to the Republican party, and the right-wing activist USA Next picked up from James Dobson.