Don't Call It Kennedycare [Jonah Goldberg]
From a reader:
We need to avoid calling it KennedyCare. We called it "Obamacare" to tie it to the sinking Obama ship. The MSM did not pick that up, instead called it the President Health Reform Plan, or whatever. We should not now bow to the MSM's desire to start calling it KennedyCare because they feel it will help it pass.
We should stick with ObamaCare, over and over and over.
I agree with this entirely though I'd put it a bit more simply. It should be called Obamacare because Obama is the president and if anything gets passed it will ultimately be what he wants passed (I'm ruling out the possibility that there will be some massive bipartisan tide that will override Obama's veto). Calling it Kennedycare is liberal messaging. I don't think it will help all that much, but I see no reason why anyone not in the tank should accept the term, particularly when it is less accurate.
Re: Kennedycare [Rich Lowry]
I can't see how wrapping Obamacare in Ted Kennedy's cloak is going to help much. The votes in Congress it would tend to influence most are already in favor. For swing votes with red-state-type constituencies, it might even be a net minus because Kennedy is a liberal icon associated with expanding government no matter what the cost — an association that serves to reinforce the bill's vulnerabilities. The talk of how Kennedy's passing is going to push the bill over-the-top is just liberal politicians and liberal journalists spinning one another up.
UPDATE
E-mail:
Rich:
How about, in the spirit of compromise, we call it ObamaKennedy Care? If this is too much...it can always be shortened to OK Care! Who could be opposed to OK Care? However, if some wags get to the naming game first...it could be called KennedyObamaCare. I am not sure how KO Care would go down with the public.
Re: 'Kennedycare' Label [Andy McCarthy]
Am I wrong to think this shows how totally detached the D.C./N.Y.-centric press is from the rest of the country, and how the Left believes too many of the press-clippings it plants?
People who admired Ted Kennedy are already in favor of socialized medicine; people who despised Ted Kennedy may actually have preferred socialized medicine (a notion they deeply dislike) to him. That's at best a wash and more likely a slight net negative. Everyone else is indifferent to Kennedy, and in any event their health care is a hell of a lot more important to them than whatever fleeting thought they might give Kennedy one way or the other — which is a big net negative for socialized medicine, but one on which Kennedy's name irrelevant.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see how this helps the Left. If I were a Lefty and I could be cold-blooded about the whole thing, I'd probably think attaching Kennedy's name was a bad idea. Even with his numbers tanking, Obama is still more personally popular with the country as a whole than Kennedy was, and he is unavoidably the guy the Left has to rely on. That makes him the only name that matters, regardless of what they call this thing.
Why does Obamacare necessarily need a person's name attached to it, anyway? Why can't they just call it, say, a "Man-Caused Disaster"? Or maybe a "domestic contingency operation" — or, better, "a domestic contingency to prevent you from getting an operation"?
The Corner on National Review Online (27 August 2009)
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