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Charles Grassley led the propaganda charge when it came to accusing the Obama Administration of intending to create a health care death panel.
It is interesting to observe the stony silence of the senator from Iowa as well as that of his colleagues when a very real death panel has reared its ugly head in Arizona.
The high octane fuel that the Republican right runs on is propaganda and with it the concomitant byproduct of hypocrisy. The name of the game is to keep accusations toward the opposition spinning while maintaining a bogus holier than thou attitude.
Such was the case with scores of issues designed to appeal to the pro-life religious right base. One of the most heinous examples in recent memory was the conduct of the Bush brothers in the Terry Schiavo tragedy. A loving husband, insisting that he was carrying out his wife's expressed wish, sought to bring a comatose life with no prospect of recovery to a humane end.
Here is where the Republican right wing propaganda stream kicks into high gear. Given the selected group's training, the religious right's indoctrination into watching Fox News has sufficiently programmed the designated group.
Hence the scientific fact that the most eminent medical minds in the country examined Terry Schiavo's file and concluded that her condition was irreversible was ignored as the Bush brothers pointed to one opinion from a doctor who was not a specialist in the designated field and had not even studied Schiavo's file.
The docile force of the indoctrinated accepted the opinion of the non-specialist and the Bush brothers. The accepted position is comparable to that of the indoctrinated right faithfully accepting Rush Limbaugh's position on global warming in the face of an opposite conclusion having been reached by 46 Nobel Prize science laureates and numerous other leading scientific minds.
Senator Grassley engaged in demagogic spin control, ever mindful of appealing to one of the party's leading constituencies, with his comment about an Obama death panel letting "granny" perish. The tragedy about the Obama health care plan was totally different, not providing a public option as a competitive alternative to health care corporation price gouging and ongoing monopoly. With the Republicans now set to control the House the plan Obama cobbled together and presented as a compromise may be scrapped.
Current Republican presidential frontrunner Mike Huckabee provided an example of the real Republican right mindset, which was anything but protective of human life. Huckabee likened Americans with severe health problems to cars placed in totaled out status by insurance companies.
On the subject of the Grassley death panel scare tactic, a real example of the species arrived under the watch of current Republican right Tea Party favorite Jan Brewer, Arizona's governor who was just provided with a full term by a majority of voters.
Brewer had earlier claimed that there were headless bodies lying in the Arizona desert without providing any verification as part of an anti-Mexican immigrant strategy. Under Brewer Arizona has a death panel that threatens the lives of citizens needing life saving operations. Funds are being donated through the private sector in a race against the clock to save lives of decent people sent against the throes of a death panel.
When confronted on the subject of the Arizona health care death panel, Brewer wrings her hands and asserts that the state is in a tragic economic position. What she does not tell questioners is that state money has been spent on repairing the roof of an indoor arena while citizens in need will die unless corrective steps are taken.
What has been the response of Grassley and others on the Republican right regarding the Arizona death panel existing under the watch of one of their party's current favorites?
Running true to form, there has been a deafening silence. The death panel question was great for spin to be used against Democrats as a sop to the party's pro-life religious right base. In a realistic situation applied to a Republican governor a "don't kill granny" concern is not expressed.
