Tim Phillips, President of Americans For Prosperity, recently spoke at The Heritage Foundation, indicating the great optimism and encouragement about the health care front which conservatives haven’t felt for months. “The left is strategically stunned, and their actions over the last ten days show it. The best hope for them is to demonize us and we have seen a whole sales-pitch shift,” Phillips stated on August 11th.
“The most recent Gallup poll shows a record [number] of Americans have joined us on global-warming and cap-and-trade,” Phillips said. “And virtually every major news poll, like NBC/WSJ, show disapproval for Obama’s health care reform. In fact, [if] you take a closer look, the disparity is even wider if you look at the subcategories of ‘Strongly Approve,’ ‘Strongly Disapprove,’ etc.”
Though he could not place his finger on an explanation for the success of conservatives this time around, Phillips believes Americans are slowly awakening to the truth about the substantively-challenged president, as well as reality versus socialist “utopia.”
“Go back to the first stimulus-package,” Phillips said. “People aren’t seeing the dramatic change and success the administration promised. Obama and Democrats over-promised so much in winning that first battle.”
“The administration’s talking-points just don’t jibe with what Americans know to be true,” he added. “I believe that Americans know, inherently, when they are being lied to—like when the administration tells us that the health care bill won’t raise taxes or add to the deficit.” President Obama repeated these assertions at his August 11 town hall meeting.
Phillips addressed the widespread accusations recently levied by politicians and mainstream media against the Republican Party for orchestrating “astroturf mobs.”
“What should our response be to their new strategy and against the Rachel Maddows of the world? For one, point out their utter hypocrisy,” Phillips contended. “Look at the Craigslist ads trying to hire an Obama army of supporters—they’re literally begging people with money now. And two: remember Code Pink, Bush’s ranch, disrupted Congressional hearings [on] the Iraq war? We weren’t complaining—it’s democracy at work. But just imagine the firestorm if Republicans and the House Speaker called Iraq anti-war protestors ‘un-American.’”
“And oh, by the way, guess what sponsor’s commercial was run in between segments—Big Ph[a]RMA,” Phillips recalled from his recent appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show (in reference to one of the largest lobbying organizations in Washington—Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America).
“I mean amateur, student quarterbacks in college get booed all the time, but paid adults politicians can’t be booed?” Phillips argued. “In no way does that mean violence, and when we see inappropriate signs we should speak up—but we shouldn’t apologize for protesting.”
Phillips warned bloggers that the left-wing protestors would be deliberately provocative and invite attack so that the ensuing orchestrated drama could be aired on a constant loop in the mainstream media.
On August 6th, alleged SEIU members delivered an unprovoked attack and beating on a man for being a black conservative handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” posters. Supporters of socialized medicine on the other hand, have been known to press charges against handshakes.
. “Can you tell us about any encouraging signs you have, or if you have, observed coming from the mainstream media now?” an attendee asked Phillips.
After ruminating over the question for a moment, Phillips unfortunately could not, but replied, “Not really, but technology and particularly the decentralization of media has been critical. It’s great if the media does cover our events, but we have so many tools now like YouTube and Twitter to get the information out.”
“But one thing encouraging is that local television networks aren’t buying the smear job—painting the town halls as unruly, disingenuous mobsters. They see that the people are real, informed, concerned citizens. 99.99% are civil, and the reporters aren’t fooled by one unruly outlier.”
Anthony Kang is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
