Anatomy of a liberal astroturf health care event

Washington Times:

The plan for a series of grass-roots demonstrations Tuesday to promote President Obama's health care agenda calls for tightly scripted events and an "escalation" of efforts against "enemies" of reform.

Organizers insist there is no comparison to rowdy summer town hall meetings and recent "tea party" protests that have challenged White House policies.

But Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which is backed by a coalition of labor unions and liberal groups including ACORN and MoveOn.org, organized the protests to target insurance companies and drafted the plan, which describes the demonstrations as part of its "insurance enemies project."

The document, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, details specific talking points, tactics, props and strategies to stage the protests. It lists goals that include action that "mobilizes our base by animating existing anger about private insurers."

The HCAN field plan dictates that each protest will include a minimum of 30 participants, target only health care insurers CIGNA, WellPoint and United Health Care and showcase what it calls "victims," or people who have either lost insurance, can't afford it or were denied coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions.

"We built a campaign to win health care reform and that is exactly what we are working on," said HCAN national spokeswoman Jacki Schechner, who authenticated the documents. But she asserted: "There is nothing top-down about this."

...

Except the script and the "victim strategy" and a few other organizational touches. Do they really think they are going to fool everyone with this scheme to push rationed health care that people do not want? Will these "victims" be anymore credible than the ones that Obama trotted out last week? Are we suppose to change our entire health care system because of a few anecdotes from people who had a tough time?

The time when Democrats could trot out these dog and pony shoes and the networks would run them without any due diligence is long past. The nets might try it but they risk embarrassment as people dig out the facts.