Tim Dickinson, writing for Rolling Stone, amassed a neat little pile of documents that enable him to make a solid case that the supposedly spontaneous town hall protests were in fact carefully orchestrated by a number of political and interest groups.
An extensive excerpt of his piece is available online, it focuses on the groups that Dickinson says made up the coalition behind the hooliganism. Some highlights, taken largely from Dickinson’s text:
- Top Republican legislators worked with the organizers “not only to block health care reform but to bankrupt President Obama’s political capital before he could move on to other key items on his agenda, including curbing climate change and expanding labor rights.”
- The basic script was written by Frank Luntz, who “rose to fame in 1994 as pollster for Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America, and crafted the Republican playbook on global warming.” Dickinson posted the full text of Luntz’ memo laying out Republican buzzwords and strategy, it’s a great read full of familiar phrases.
- Americans for Prosperity, the ringleader of the hooligan-based efforts, “is a front group for oil billionaires David and Charles Koch, co-owners of the world’s largest private oil and gas conglomerate.” Its efforts are led by Tim Phillips, who “served as a strategic consultant to George W. Bush in 2000 and reputedly took part in the smear campaign in South Carolina that portrayed John McCain’s adopted daughter as his mulatto love child.” According to Dickinson, their health care rabble rousing has paid off: “AFP now boasts 700,000 members and chapters in 24 states.”
- As an integral part of the effort, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks has continued the legislator’s push against government-run medicine. Its goal, Dickinson reports, is to become “a grassroots juggernaut capable of going toe-to-toe with the unions, extreme enviros and the MoveOn.org’s of the world.”
- Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, another major player in the effort, is led by a former CEO of a hospital conglomerate who “now runs a chain of urgent-care clinics that serve uninsured Americans fearful of being bankrupted by hospital emergency-room visits” and would stand to lose a heap of money should the percentage of insured American rise.
As an interesting (if not particularly timely) side note, Dickinson also found that death panel pusher’s Betsy McCaughey’s notorious (and successful) attempt to derail Clinton-era health care reform was partly aided by tobacco companies that opposed the Clinton proposal to fund reform with taxes on their products.
