Friday, October 24, 2008

Robo McCain Slimes Obama Over Health Care Plan

John McCain has significantly increased his robo-call attacks on Barack Obama. Perhaps it is cheaper to reach people than spending millions on advertising, but what is in those calls is becoming more and more disturbing. The latest one tries to say that Obama will slow the development of life-saving drugs even though nothing of the sort is mentioned.

From TPM:

Script

...because Barack Obama and the Democrats have jeopardized our Medicare and Social Security with their proposed massive government takeover of health care, and will be reducing access to doctors and slowing development of life-saving drugs. Don't let the inexperience and poor judgement of Barack Obama and his Democrat allies put our livelihood at risk. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866 558-5591.

It's pretty craftily worded. Note how the call insinuates that Obama and Dems will slow development of life saving drugs in addition to passing their plan, as if that's actually an Obama policy goal. That's a twist on the stock GOP line, which is that the plan itself would have that effect.

The Huffington Post first got word of this call from readers, and we just obtained the call from a reader in Wisconsin.
As the days before the election grow shorter, the attacks are and will become nastier. The reality is that while the conservative base would like to see medical advances from embryonic stem cells eliminated, Democrats want to continue those amazing discoveries and fully fund science programs so that we can remain competitive in scientific and technological breakthroughs in the future. As for Medicare and Social Security, McCain would reduce Medicare benefits and his goal of privatizing Social Security would have put the system in severe distress due to the perilous situation in the markets.