The public knows the GOP are fibbing: Poll

"I can't tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don't understand why people would call you socialist. In my country, you'd be considered a conservative." -- President Obama, Sept. 20, 2009

There have always been two basic arguments for health insurance reform: one based in morality, the other self-interest. For a documented 45,000 persons to die prematurely in America each year because they can't afford proper care is a national disgrace. Almost everybody apart from "conservatives" whose moral imagination is limited to judging other people's sex lives understands that.

The current cruel, wasteful system is indefensible. Surely that's why almost three-quarters of physicians polled by the New England Journal of Medicine favor genuine reform. About 63 percent of doctors surveyed nationwide support a public option; 10 percent would prefer a single-payer system, basically Medicare for everybody.

For all the hullabaloo, it appears alarmist rhetoric hasn't scared ordinary people as much as it has cable TV anchors. A Bloomberg poll asked which right-wing objections people found legitimate, and which were "scare tactics." Basically, voters rejected GOP rhetoric almost 2-to-1. About 63 percent think Sarah Palin's "death panels" are a distortion, versus 30 percent who fear them. It's 61 to 33 percent on the claim that health reform means government-paid abortions, 58 to 37 percent on the false claim that illegal aliens will get subsidized insurance, etc.

In short, hardcore opposition is mainly confined to the Republican "base," itself increasingly confined to the South. Why has Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, started making conciliatory noises? Consider these remarkable statistics from a Research 2000 poll: Voters in the Northeast overwhelmingly dislike congressional Republicans. The party's favorability rating there is a minuscule 7, yes 7, percent. Moreover, it's a paltry 13 percent in the Midwest; 14 percent in the West. Only in the South is the GOP politically relevant, with a 50 to 37 percent advantage over Democrats.

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