We can’t afford not to.
Republicans like to pretend that poor people get rich off the government. As if that makes sense.
99 percent of Republicans do or will depend on the social safety net at some point in their lives. Like most Americans, they’re one illness from poverty, one illness from never being able to afford health insurance on their own. The Affordable Care Act fixes this. But the shame of this vulnerability and dependence in the conservative brain is stronger than logic.
Politics is not about logic. It’s about emotion. You don’t win with arguments. You win by framing yourself and your opponent.
This is why many Democrats have resisted the ObamaCare frame for so long. Mostly, I think, they believed that if the GOP was using it, it couldn’t be helpful—especially because the right is spending millions to defame a historic achievement that cuts the deficit and saves thousands of American lives.
The frame Democrats wanted to use was the Affordable Care Act. Though approval for the law is improving, I’ll say this noble attempt hasn’t be effective. Why? Because it feels as if we’re retreating by even using the phrase. And the President’s election campaign, recognizing that they’re running against Mr. RomneyCare, has decided the retreat is over.
Last Friday, they decided to launch a campaign to embrace the ObamaCare moniker via social media. This effort including promoting the Twitter hashtag #ILikeObamaCare. As usual, conservatives tried to hijack this effort for their narrow purposes. They used the hashtag to critique the law using their favorite Fox News quotes. They then high-fived each other and moved on to defaming a dead kid.
Being @LOLGOP, I did my best to battle the right-wing nonsense with an endless series of my own tweets, which I will document here for posterity and in hopes that you might tweet them yourself.
In no particular order:
#ILikeObamaCare because it removed an insurance “cap” I never knew I had.
#ILikeObamacare because I was turned down for GeraldoCare because I was wearing a hoodie.
#ILikeObamaCare because America shouldn’t divorce you when you get Cancer. That’s Newt Gingrich’s job.
#ILikeObamacare because the GOP hates it and they’re still about to nominate the guy who created it.
#ILikeObamaCare because the free market has terrible bedside manner.
#ILikeObamaCare because a vagina is not a preexisting condition
#ILikeObamaCare because affordable reproductive health care for all is the best way to prevent abortions.
#ILikeObamacare because conservatives solution to 45,000 Americans dying every year for lack of insurance is more teleprompter jokes.
#ILikeObamacare because I know what the word rescission means.
#ILikeObamaCare because GingrichCare expires for females when your BMI hits 24.
#ILikeObamaCare because it’s working in Massachusetts
#IlikeObamacare because the Founders passed a mandate for sailors in the first Congress.
#ILikeObamacare because it will still be around in 2014, unlike most of Mitt Romney’s opinions.
#ILikeObamacare because when you keep conservatives busy on Twitter they’re less likely to reproduce.
#ILikeObamaCare because 45,000 Americans die every year for a lack of health insurance and some of weren’t even wearing hoodies.
#ILikeObamacare because Ayn Rand took Medicare and the GOP blew the surplus.
#ILikeObamaCare because the President decided preventing a Great Depression wasn’t enough.
#ILikeObamacare because all voting like a temporarily embarrassed millionaire got me was 8 years of George W. Bush.
#ILikeObamacare because conservatives need another service they’ll rely on as they pretend to hate the government.
#ILikeObamaCare because it mandates insurance companies actually spend up to 85% of their income on health care.
#ILikeObamaCare because Republicans calling their own plan socialist is amusing.
#ILikeObamaCare because I think Michele Bachmann has a ministroke every time she says it.
#ILikeObamacare because women are still allowed to vote.
#ILikeObamacare because going bankrupt because you got sick is so two-thousand-and-late.
#ILikeObamaCare because tax breaks for the wealthy don’t save lives.
#ILikeObamaCare because reproductive care is health care.
#ILikeObamaCare because conservatives are going to need mental health parity in 2013.
#ILikeObamaCare because God is too busy getting the whole Tebow thing settled.
#ILikeObamacare because I’m beginning to think the billionaire polluters that fund the GOP may not have my best interests in mind.
#ILikeObamaCare because you shouldn’t be afraid to go to the doctor because you don’t want a preexisting condition.
#IlikeObamacare because voting against my own interests doesn’t make me exceptional.
#ILikeObamaCare because Justin Timberlake is going to play it in the movie.
#ILikeObamaCare because to attack it you have to have lies like Romney
#ILikeObamaCare because it reforms Medicare without gutting it.
#ILikeObamacare because most Americans don’t find out there’s a cap on their insurance until it’s much too late.
#ILikeObamaCare because my nickname isn’t Rand.
#ILikeObamaCare because the Medicare donut hole isn’t a health food.
#ILikeObamaCare because you shouldn’t need a Kickstarter for your cancer treatments.
#ILikeObamaCare because my school blocks the SantorumCare site.
#IlikeObamacare because paying for the uninsured to show up in emergency rooms is a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money
#ILikeObamaCare because it includes the first new taxes on the richest 1% in a generation
#IlikeObamacare for the medical loss ratio alone http://t.co/juXfaCmk
#ILikeObamacare because every complaint conservatives have against it is more true of the current private insurer hell they’d keep us in.
#ILikeObamaCare because who are we kidding? It’s a great start that will only get better.
#ILikeObamaCare because when Mitt Romney runs against it he’s going to seem like Madonna running against Lady Gagacare.
UPDATE from Eclectablog: If you live in Michigan and would like to see how the ACA is already helping in our state, check out THIS REPORT (pdf).
