Tom McClusky

Last week we posted the Family Research Council's television ad opposing health care reform which claims that the legislation would mandate coverage for abortion while denying seniors needed medical coverage.

Factcheck.org took at look at the claims made by FRC in the ad and concluded that they were misleading, if not outright false, but I wanted to focus on something that has been confusing me about the Right's talking points in opposing this legislation; namely, their claim that a government program would lead to health care "rationing" as if such "rationing" doesn't already take place every day when private insurers refuse or deny coverage.

Fact Check asked FRC's Tom McClusky where they got the idea that the legislation would result in denying the elderly necessary medical procedures:

We asked FRC’s McClusky about the basis for the ad’s assertion that the federal plan wouldn’t pay for the elderly man’s surgery, which was portrayed as a rationing of care. (We’re not told what kind of surgery the man wanted to have, or why it was denied, both important details.)

McClusky cited a June 24 town hall meeting on health care that was held in the East Room of the White House and broadcast on ABC. At the event, Obama responded to a woman who said her 105-year-old mother had received a pacemaker several years earlier, despite being told by some doctors that she was too old. According to McClusky, Obama answered that under a revamped health care system, "the government will look into what is best for her, whether it’s a pill or surgery or whatever." Said McClusky, "That’s rationing."

Fact Check points out that, in the exchange McClusky cited, President Obama actually said the opposite:

The president didn’t say that government would decide what treatments or procedures would be allowed. He said the opposite: "I don’t want bureaucracies making those decisions," and "we want doctors and medical experts to be making decisions," based on scientific evidence of what is likely to result.

But the really interesting exchange came when Fact Check asked McClusky why they were making this claim a central part of their ad considering that private insurers routinely deny coverage for necessary medical treatment:

We don’t know whether or not some form of rationing would eventually take place if one of the pending bills were to become law. We would note, as does Obama, that denials of coverage are routine among private health insurance companies and under Medicare in our current system, and we asked McClusky about that. Why would such decisions about care be more objectionable under a public plan, for instance, than they are when Aetna or UnitedHealthcare denies coverage? "We find it more troubling when the federal government is doing it," he said. "It’s the 800-lb gorilla."

So if your insurance provider refuses to cover necessary medical costs, FRC sees that perfectly acceptable, but if "the federal government is doing it" then it is an absolute outrage.  

In essence, FRC is taking a standard practice among private insurers and using it to try and scare people into opposing "government-run" health care … all in an effort to ensure that private insurers will remain free to continue to do the very thing they are warning that the government would do.

We have known for some time now that the Right was targeting Dawn Johnsen, President Obama's nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, for defeat.  But what we weren't aware of, until reading this post from the Family Research Council's Tom McClusky, was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't have the votes to get her confirmed:

Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is now telling reporters he does not have the votes to confirm Dawn Johnsen for Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department. Ms. Johnsen has been a long time advocate for abortion rights groups, comparing pregnancy to slavery. She has also been outspoken on counterterrorism measures.

Of course, if you read the article he links to, you find out that Reid didn't say he doesn't have the votes to confirm Johnsen - what he actually said was that he doesn't have the votes to prevent a Republican-led filibuster of her nomination:

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) moves to ease a backlog of executive branch nominations, he suggested on Tuesday that he does not have the votes to bring up President Barack Obama’s pick to run the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.

“Right now we’re finding out when to do that,” Reid said, responding to a question about the status of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to the Justice post. “We need a couple Republican votes until we can get to 60.”

As Reid explained elsewhere:

“We need a couple Republican votes until we can get to 60," Reid added. And it's just a small number, maybe two or three. But at this stage, I don't have all the Democrats. I have virtually all, but not all. And remember, we have 59 Democrats, and that's not enough to do it."

Reid has more than enough votes to confirm Johnsen if she can get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, which is exactly what Republicans are trying to prevent with a filibuster. 

According to his bio, McClusky has a long history of working in politics, including a stint as a political analyst for the Republican National Committee, so presumably he knows about Senate procedure and the difference between a confirmation vote and a cloture vote.

In fact, I 'm pretty sure that he does, because just a few years ago, he signed onto a letter calling on Senators to ensure that Bush administration nominees received an up-or-down vote on the floor:

If you cannot support a particular nominee, vote him or her out of committee without a positive recommendation, or vote against confirmation. But please do not deny the nominee a fair up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. In other words, we ask only that you do your job by putting statesmanship above politics and special interests.

Is it too much to ask that the Vice President for Government Affairs at the Family Research Council not hypocritically and purposely mischaracterize what is going on regarding Johnsen's nomination and the GOP's obstruction efforts?

Apparently it is.

I honestly can’t believe that I am still writing about this phony “controversy” over the recent DHS report but, just as with the similarly phony controversy over the stimulus legislation, with every passing day the Right continues to twist this innocuous report into evidence that the government intends to round-up conservatives and toss them into prison and use the “outrage” to seek the removal of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano:  

A non-profit organization devoted to national security is demanding the resignation of the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, or that President Obama fire her immediately.

The Internet-based Move America Forward is using their web site, email, and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to push for the removal of Secretary Napolitano.

Napolitano noticeably demonstrates that she is incapable of protecting America from the threat of Islamic terrorism. She must be fired immediately if our country is going to be safe in the coming years, according to Move Forward America, an organization that supports the US military as well as federal, state and local law enforcement officials.

Just about every right-wing groups is getting in on the act, with Focus on the Family adding its voice with this article:

Conservatives and religious groups across the nation are outraged by a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security that labeled them as right-wing extremists and terrorists. Republican members of the House Committee on Homeland Security have requested a committee hearing and investigation on the report. Some are calling for the resignation of Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Gary Bauer, president of American Values, said an investigation is unlikely to go very far with Democrats in charge.

“It’s going to be very difficult to get anything done about this outrage," he said, "or about any other issue, unless some of the members of President Obama’s party begin to step up and hold his feet to the fire.”

…

Dr. Janice Crouse, senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, said the department is on a rampage against people with biblical views.

She said: “It’s astounding to me in a world where we are fighting extremism of all sorts from terrorists around the nation — including pirates in the seas — that Homeland Security would be concerned about people who are pro-life.”  

And this video :

And here is FRC Action’s Tom McClusky complaining that the government is watching him instead of watching the real terrorists:

The report, which has been rightfully maligned to death on the right, was poorly written and even more poorly defended by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. While worrying about TEA party protests and pro-life veterans who supported Ron Paul for President DHS seems to have no problem (or at least they don't warrant their own separate reports) with groups and individuals who actually perform acts of terrorism. The same week the DHS report was released the FBI declared, for the first time ever, an American grown terrorist Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old animal rights activist. Meanwhile over the weekend, in the same city that DHS is located, a group of liberal protestors caused more than $110,000 in damage to two bank branches in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. when at least 15 people dressed in black used bricks, hammers and sticks to smash windows, smearing red paint symbols that denounced the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

But I'm the one DHS deems a potential terrorist?

Of course, DHS never deemed groups like FRC potential terrorist, despite their incessant cries of victimization.  And, as a matter of fact, DHS also released a report on left-wing extremists that Greg Sargent posted several weeks ago and guess who it focused on? That’s right, radical animal rights activists and anarchists:  

It focuses on the more prominent leftwing groups within the animal rights, environmental, and anarchist extremist movements that promote or have conducted criminal or terrorist activities. This assessment is intended to alert DHS policymakers, state and local officials, and intelligence analysts monitoring the subject so they can better focus their collection requirements and analysis … Many leftwing extremists use the tactic of direct action to inflict economic damage on businesses and other targets to force the targeted organization to abandon what the extremists deem objectionable. Direct actions range from animal releases, property theft, vandalism, and cyber attacks—all of which extremists regard as nonviolent—to bombings and arson.

Never to be outdone when it comes to crying “victimization” or general right-wing lunacy, Janet Porter and a handful of allied organizations are placing an ad in various news outlets demanding Napolitano’s resignation:

The No Political Profiling Coalition (www.NoPoliticalProfiling.com) has begun placing full-page ads, the first in this week's Washington Times Weekly edition and the Times' Wednesday daily edition, demanding the removal of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for the DHS report "Rightwing Extremism."
 
…

"Every day Janet Napolitano remains Secretary of Homeland Security is further proof of this administration's disdain for the Constitution and willingness stigmatize its opponents to advance a partisan agenda."
 
The ad includes pictures of George Washington, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan and Pope Benedict XVI – all "right-wing extremists," according to Napolitano's Department of Home Land Security.
 
The ad is sponsored by a coalition of more than a dozen conservative organizations, including the American Family Association, Religious Freedom Coalition, Let Freedom Ring, United States Justice Foundation, Vision America, and Faith2Action.

Everything about this ad is either misleading or outright false, especially this claim:

Ignoring the real threats to our security from known Islamic jihad terrorist cells currently training terrorists on American soil, DHS, instead, has declared law-abiding citizens who express their First Amendment Rights as: “the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States” and has initiated domestic spying on them.

Here is what the DHS report actually says:

DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Information from law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.

Its not “law-abiding citizens who express their First Amendment Rights” that DHS says are  “the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States,” its “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology.” 

How completely unhinged has the Right become when they are now paraphrasing “small terrorist cells”  to mean “law-abiding citizens” and then using that false characterization in order to play the victim?

Earlier this month we noted that Gov. Sarah Palin was facing a bit of a dilemma rooted in the fact that her state had a  "Missouri Plan"-like structure for appointing state Supreme Court justices. Palin was required to choose the justice from a set list of candidates, none of whom fully reflected her views. Palin had two candidates to choose from, and she ended up naming the one opposed by the right-wing Alaska Family Council.

The decision has not generated much coverage or engendered much controversy – but that doesn’t mean that the Religious Right did not notice it.  As the Washington Times reports, the Right is not happy with her decision and just might be beginning to rethink its love affair with her due to her unwillingness to “stand up and fight,” with Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America saying it has “caused many of us to take a step back:”

Some conservatives have suggested Mrs. Palin should have rejected both candidates by sending them back to the panel. Former Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski employed a similar tactic to protest previous judicial candidates, but was unsuccessful in getting the panel to give him more choices … Some conservatives don't see the Alaska Constitution as an excuse.

"The fact she wasn't willing to stand up and fight this is something (they) will seriously question on the national stage," Family Research Council Action Vice President Tom McCluskey said.

Mrs. Wright of CWA said she'd like to give Mrs. Palin the "benefit of the doubt" but said the Alaska governor will ultimately be held accountable if Judge Christen makes decisions hurting the pro-life cause.

"That's the responsibility a person takes if they become governor or president," Mrs. Wright said. "They are responsible for their choices."

"We'll be watching," she added.