by Mark Silva and updated with RNC response
How much of the White House calculus behind President Barack Obama's pitch for health care reform at a rally in Minnesota today involves who lives there?
Not the voters -- Obama carried the state by 10 points.
The governor -- the retiring Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who says he is considering running for president in 2012.
The Republican National Committee staged its convention there last year, nominating John McCain and Sarah Palin in St. Paul. The Democratic National Committee is lashing out at Pawlenty today with a Web-ad accusing him of extremism and peddling misinformation about the president's health plans.
Republican leaders complain that Obama is the one peddling bad medicine.
"One thing that's already apparent in this debate is that the problem isn't the administration's sales pitch,'' Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says of the president's trip to Minnesota today. "The problem is what they're selling.
"Americans are rightly concerned about a rush to hike taxes on small businesses, cut seniors' Medicare benefits, and add trillions of dollars in more government spending and debt,'' says McConnell (R-Ky). "The status quo is unacceptable. But so are the alternatives that the administration and Democrats in Congress have proposed.''
And RNC spokesman LeRoy Coleman said this today of the DNC attack:
"Once again, the Democrats are desperately trying to shift attention away from their extraordinarily unpopular health care plan - especially on a day when the president is bringing his traveling road show to Minnesota in an attempt to sell his floundering government-run health care proposal. Minnesotans, however, aren't fooled by the rhetoric. The president's government-run health care plan would increase costs, increase taxes, increase the deficit and reduce health care choice and quality.''
The White House is planning a big rally today in Minnesota, and the DNC is characterizing the host governor as "way out of the mainstream.''
"The harder Tim Pawlenty tries to appeal to the far-right wing of the Republican Party, the more ludicrous his arguments get,'' says Brad Woodhouse, DNC spokesman. " In the past week alone, he has strengthened his already vocal support for the absurd and debunked claim that health insurance reform could lead to death panels.''
Obama has complained that so many town hall arguments against health care are staged for a YouTube. Well, see the YouTube the DNC has staged for Pawlenty, a 2012 hopeful. It's up above.
Comments
The 'Eddie Munster' of broadcasting interviews the 'Pauly Shore' of politics.
Does 'The Cats Paw' oppose George Bush's 1999 death panels?
http://www.eons.comwww.eons.com/groups/topic/1805704-Texas-Euthanasia-Death-Panel-Legislation-1999
Posted by: Rod Serling ♫♫ | September 12, 2009 10:46 AM
Minnesota is usually a blue state. The metra area is pretty blue and everywhere else outside the metra's are pretty red. He'll have to win his state before running for President.
Posted by: HmongRodneyKing | September 12, 2009 2:09 PM
Minnesota you were on point today. This is what the American people are about.
THE TRUTH
Posted by: msla56 | September 12, 2009 3:04 PM
Let me get this straight. Bush implements death panels in Texas in 1999, but the good Republicans reporting here don't care, nor will they respond??
This seem to me to prove their moral cowardice, and bigotry. Attack attack attack POTUS Obama, but hands off the anointed one, Bush.
Seriously, Bush is the one trying to knock off your Downs Syndrome cousin, grammy and grammpy, not Obama.
Posted by: Susan | September 12, 2009 7:47 PM