Back in 2003, Republican leaders praised the AARP for its support of President Bush's unfunded and deeply flawed Medicare prescription benefit. But now that the 40 million member organization has endorsed the House Democrats' health care reform bill, the GOP is declaring war on its one-time ally. Helping lead the attack is an array of industry-funded front groups and their reactionary has-been spokesmen like Pat Boone.

Last week, Republican Congressmen Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Mike Pence (R-IN) implied the nation's leading organization for seniors was in for the ACORN treatment from the GOP and its media allies. Despite the thorough debunking of right-wing claims that Democratic health care reform proposals would slash Medicare benefits for46 million American elderly:

Pence and Reichert suggested that support was the result of corruption inside the AARP and not based on the interests of its membership.

"What you've got here is a backroom deal," Pence said of reform measures expected to be introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this afternoon. "Democrats are protecting the salaries of the heads of groups like AARP while cutting Medicare"...

The GOP is using more than just rhetoric to go after the group. Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) claims to have launched an investigation into AARP in his home state. Reichert says his "ongoing" investigation focuses on whether AARP should be classified as an insurance company because of its revenue from royalties the group gets from licensing its brand for insurance products.

Sounding the clarion call for conservatives is aging singer turned World Net Daily regular Pat Boone. Boone, who in recent months branded Barack Obama a "president without a country" who is "waterboarding America" over "socialistic health care and a host of other ultraliberal causes," is also the celebrity mouthpiece for the 60 Plus Association.

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Mike Huckabee is still a favorite among the James Dobson crowd as Sarah Palin was a no show at their Value Voters Summit weekend wingnut jubilee.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won the Values Voter Summit's 2012 presidential straw poll Saturday, grabbing nearly 29 percent of the vote in a crowded field.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence each won roughly 12 percent of the 597 votes cast.

Four of the top five candidates addressed religious conservatives at the three-day Values Voter conference in Washington this week — the kind of attendance seen as a significant gesture by activists here, especially in an off-election year. Palin did not make an appearance.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which hosted the conference, said Saturday that Huckabee had "potential," but stressed that the former governor's strong showing wouldn't translate into automatic support from the FRC's political action committee. "We want a fully-rounded conservative candidate," he said. "Right now, the door's wide open."

If Palin had showed up and winked at the crowd, her base would have responded in kind, but it's tough going to these things for the quitter. She'll be there in a few years and whip the religious conservative base up into a frenzy.

And Huckabee shows off his foreign policy chops by backing the insane John Bolton over the Pentagon and the White House. There you have it...

Rep. Mike Pence has been on the forefront of pushing this Van Jones scandal created by Glenn Beck (good to see he gets his walking papers from such an impeccable source, isn't it?), calling for his resignation and saying that Jones' "extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this Administration or the public debate."

But as Jeremy Scahill points out, Pence isn't bothered by the extremist views of Erik Prince of Blackwater/Xe, who has contributed thousands of dollars to Pence:

On Friday, Pence, who describes himself as “Christian, Conservative, Republican, in that order,” said Jones’s “extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Beyond the obvious here (the hate-filled rhetoric we see every day from racist, right-wing wackos, including those in public office), it is an interesting comment considering that Pence is an extremist right-wing evangelical Christian who has taken thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Blackwater’s owner, Erik Prince. Prince has also donated to Pence’s Political Action Committee “Principles Exalt a Nation.” In December 2007, three months after Blackwater operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, Pence and his Republican Study Committee, which serves “the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives,” organized a gathering to welcome Prince to Washington. “Not only has Mr. Prince personally been targeted by partisan warfare repeatedly over the past months, but the use of contracting throughout the government has been under attack by this Congress,” Pence’s committee’s statement said. Should Pence resign for cavorting with and accepting campaign cash from a man who allegedly “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” in the words of a former employee?

I think it's time for the majority party to start acting like one. If Republican-controlled Congress could set aside time to debate condemning MoveOn.org for their Gen. "Betray Us" ad, then the Democratic-controlled Congress ought to be making sure that the double standard of IOKIYAR no longer stands.

Anything You Can Do from Annie, Get Your Gun (1950)

It's the closest approximation of the Sunday shows I can think of right now: Annie Oakley and Frank Butler trying to one-up each other, screaming face to face and fighting about nothing of substance. Although I can't complain this week that the Democrats are non-existent or out-numbered (and hooray! the Obama administration has figured out they need to be out there too), my feeling is that the discussion will not be any more substantive than Annie and Frank's. WH Spokesperson Robert Gibbs will be on This Week, Senior Adviser David Axelrod will be on Meet the Press and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will be on Face the Nation, presumably to discuss the latest GOP hissy fit du jour of Obama's planned speech to students. But we'll also get lots of health care jabs as well, with Dr. Thomas Frieden of CDC on State of the Union and Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich on Fox News Sunday.

ABC's "This Week" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; former Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Bob Dole, R-Kan.; Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor; Harold Ford Jr., Democratic Leadership Council chairman.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Katty Kay, Gloria Borger and Michael Duffy. Topics: How does President Obama need to reset the health care debate? Should Ted Kennedy have shown more public penance for Chappaquiddick? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3;
If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Some of our greatest hits: First, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the limits of American power. Then former New York State governor Elliot Spitzer's unique perspective on the financial crisis and the Dalai Lama's perspective on the world.

"Fox News Sunday" - Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

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This is a typical Villager panel discussion that makes me want to throw something through the TV set. Extoll the virtues of bipartisanship for its own sake, everything is win or lose and about politics, like it's some game, and never take any responsibility for your own network not making sure the voters are more informed.

Apparently Bob Cesca felt the same way after watching a some of yesterday's media coverage of these poll numbers. They're Hurting America:

The disconnect, as John Cole points out, is the corporate media. They've been predictably covering the politics-as-sports debate, but not the intracacies of the policy, which they ought to be doing. So it's not surprising that cable news is leading the charge in suggesting that it's the president who hasn't been forthright enough. Let it be said that the media never misses an opportunity to make excuses for its massive breaches of integrity.

But let's say for a moment that the president explained reform and the public option perfectly. Exactly like the press is prescribing. Even then, they'd very likely 1) find another anti-reform meme to inject into their "smackdowns" and half-time shows, and 2) they'd still be inviting serial liars like Mike Pence, unabashed morons like Maria Bartiromo, and centrist capitulators like Harold Ford onto their air to spread misinformation about reform and further confuse viewers.

The one thing I agree with the CNN panel on though is that the President has not done a good enough job of laying out some details of what he wants to see in this legislation, and it's helped them muddy the waters. Bob's right though. It would probably make little difference with what the media coverage looked like.

MALVEAUX: Also joining me is CNN Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger.

What does it mean, Gloria, for the president to be losing out on these Independents?

BORGER: I think it's a real possible for him. Remember that President Obama won the election with 52 percent of Independent voters. That number is down considerably to 43 percent, and Independents are the margin of difference here for him.

Now, the key to keeping those people is, right now, they are worried about the deficit. They see the president as a big spender. They see him aligned with so-called liberal leaders in the Democratic Congress. So, what he's got to do when -- after Labor Day is kind of show them that he is the kind of so-called post-partisan president that many of them thought they were electing.

The good news for President Obama in this is that they are not realigning themselves with the Republicans yet, because the Republican Party still has very high disapproval ratings.

Now, Jessica, you've been watching something as well, which it looks like to be a generational gap in these numbers.

YELLIN: Absolutely. Well, we know the president did exceptionally well with the young during the election, and that has held strong. Sixty-five percent of the young still approve of the job the president is doing, but it's seniors that we keep talking about, especially in light of health care reform.

He has only a 42 percent approval with seniors. That's very low, and that's right now. So, our numbers don't necessarily tease out that it's because of health care reform, but it's likely that this is a direct effect of the current debate. And if the president is able to get some sort of health care bill through, if he's strong on seniors, protecting them, protecting their Medicare, we could see that number rebound.

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Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones do a hokie, but apt parody of what dealing with the Republicans on health care amounts to. Kent Jones really doesn't want to order pizza, and the Republicans really don't want any sort of health care reform.

Maddow: Republicans in the United States' Senate are Kent. And we're trying to order pizza. They do say that they want health care reform.

[....]

Because Republicans have said that they want health care reform, Democrats have been trying to work with them to come up with a bill that both sides can agree on. We can compromise. Democrats took national health care and single payer off the table from the very beginning because they were sure that Republicans wouldn't want those.

Then they started negotiating down from there, trying to find something, anything that the Republican would say yes to. But just as national health care was unacceptable to them, and single payer was unacceptable to them, the public option is also turning out to be unacceptable to them. And now even the further watered down reform option of co-ops are unacceptable to them.

[....]

That's a really important moment. Senator Grassley is the top Republican negotiator in the Senate on health care and he just admitted to Chuck Todd that even if he personally gets to draft a bill for the Senate to vote on, even if he ends up with a policy to vote on that he thinks is great, he himself might not vote for it.

Mean while Jon Kyl, the number two Republican in the whole Senate told reporters on a conference call today that dropping the public option still won't get any Republicans to vote for the bill.

No matter what is in the bill, Republicans are not going to vote for the bill. No matter what is on the pizza, Kent doesn't want it.

Maybe it's time for Democrats to take the hint. Republicans don't want pizza. Order exactly what you want. Put together the best possible reform bill purely on the basis of what you think the best policy for the country is, and then, forget the Republicans. Focus on getting all the Democrats in line to vote for it.

The Republicans are not here to help. And Kent is not here to make a good pizza order. Take the hint.

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Mike Pence with some unfortunate lighting at the Right Online right wing bloggers conference, decrying liberalism for all that's wrong with the United States in the land of Mike Pence's brain. So nice to see Pence is still complaining about that stimulus bill he says didn't work, but wanted more of for his state.

Heather already posted on this segment, but I wanted to make an additional point. When I saw that Mike Pence was getting a full segment by himself I was a little upset because he had the floor to himself on FOX which usually leads to unfiltered right wing talking points becoming gospel and I imagine that's how he viewed it as well. But when Chris Wallace read off a litany of his failings he had no coherent response. He never answered any of the questions and sat there as a true representative of the conservative movement. They are barren of ideas, obstruct all meaningful legislation and have absolutely nothing to add that will try and dig this country out of the hole the Bush administration put us in.

WALLACE: Congressman, isn't the recession leveling off? And doesn't President Obama deserve some credit?

WALLACE: But nobody -- excuse me. Nobody said that the stimulus bill was going to stop the recession.

WALLACE: But I want to ask you about another report, and we're going to put it up on the screen. More than 2,400 people are now at work on federal-stimulus-funded roadway projects in Indiana.

"What's clear is that the stimulus projects have boosted an industry otherwise floundering in Indiana." And that is not from the DNC. That's from the Evansville, Indiana Courier & Press.

WALLACE: First you're saying the stimulus is bad. Now you're saying you're just not getting your fair share of it.

Watch the segment and watch him flail away like an old man trying to hit a 95 mph fastball. He whiffed and looked bad doing it. The conservative mantra of tax cuts alone would not have done anything to fix our problems but only deepened them.
And the cash for clunkers program as Chris Wallace repeatedly brought up has been a big hit, but you'll never get him to admit that.

-- Ford Motor Co. will post its first monthly U.S. sales increase since 2007 as the government’s “cash-for-clunkers” incentives boosted industrywide deliveries of new vehicles to the highest levels of this year.

Details will be released today when Ford joins automakers in announcing July deliveries, said Ken Czubay, the company’s U.S. sales and marketing chief. He disclosed the year-over-year improvement in an interview yesterday without giving specifics.

Industry sales probably ran at an annual rate of more than 10 million autos, 2009’s best showing, after the trade-in credits stoked consumers’ interest, said George Pipas, Ford’s sales analyst. Such a result may indicate a bottom in the market’s worst slump since 1976.

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Rep. Mike Pence disagrees with the stimulus and voted against it but wants more of it for his state. "The Democrats in Congress and the administration said we were going to have to borrow nearly a trillion dollars from future generations and spend it on this -- this long laundry list of liberal spending priorities we called stimulus and that unless we did that, unemployment would reach 8% nationally. It's 9.5% nationally today," Pence told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

But Pence charges that Indiana isn't getting enough money from the very program that he doesn't support. "You check the Indiana Star, you'll see stories about the stimulus. One is that four out of ten major projects in the stimulus for Indiana had been allotted to companies outside the state of Indiana," complained Pence.

Transcript below the fold.

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You know, I've been doing this Sunday morning shift for a few years now and I'm feeling a lot of sympathy for Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day. Every morning I wake up, and it's the same ol' participants and the same ol' conversations and the same ol' media bias. Look at this line up: Sen. John "I didn't get elected POTUS, but I'll get the Sunday shows!" McCain on State of the Union; former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on This Week (not to mention the ever-unbalanced and factually-challenged Michelle Malkin as part of the roundtable); National Economic Council's Larry Summers on both Face the Nation and Meet the Press and Senators Jim DeMint and Mike Pence on Fox News Sunday. Most egregiously, Tweety poses the question whether overt and extremist racism might actually help the Republicans. I can hardly stand it. Balance? A liberal perspective? Some journalistic integrity? Ha!

Doesn't it sound eerily familiar to pretty much every Sunday?

ABC's "This Week" - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Summers; former Reps. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., and J.C. Watts, R-Okla.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Norah O'Donnell, Jennifer Loven, Howard Fineman. Topics: Why is President Obama losing public support for health care reform? Could racist talk from extremists help mainstream Republicans in elections? At the end of 2009, will Obama be viewed as a change agent? YES: 8 NO: 4; Will a handful of Senate Republicans vote for the final health care bill? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz; Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Will a new president help to stop the deadly downward spiral in Afghanistan? Fareed interviews the two candidates with the best shot at unseating President Karzai in this month's Afghan elections. Plus, is the U.S. government interfering in Iran? Spying? Supporting the opposition? Sending in radio and tv messages? All of the above?

"Fox News Sunday" - Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.; Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

Luckily, I got you babes to let us know what you see this Sunday morning. Leave your tips in the comments.

Even as Republicans wage their new war against the latest efforts at health care reform, they are still fighting the last one. 44 years after the passage of Medicare, Republicans leaders like Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) are attacking Democratic proposals by blasting the popular health system for America's elderly. Sadly for the GOP, Medicare's proven success in reducing poverty among the elderly and its strong support from beneficiaries belies Price's claim that "nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare."

As ThinkProgress noted, Republican demagoguery on Medicare has a long and sordid past. While George H.W. Bush in 1964 used the now-eternal sound bite to describe it simply as "socialized medicine," Ronald Reagan warned three years earlier that failure to stop Medicare meant " you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

On Thursday, orthopedic surgeon turned Georgia Congressman Tom Price picked up the baton of GOP fear-mongering on Medicare. In a Politico op-ed which unsurprisingly omitted any estimates of the cost and coverage of the Republicans' latest supposed health care reform plan, Price slammed Medicare as the poster child for everything that's wrong about proposals backed by the Obama White House:

Going down the path of more government will only compound the problem. While the stated goal remains noble, as a physician, I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare. Because of Washington's one-size-fits-all approach, its flawed coverage rules and broken financing mechanisms, seniors are increasingly having care rationed while federal health spending spirals out of control.

And though newly eligible Medicare patients struggle even to find a doctor who can accept them, the president appears immovable in his belief that what is needed to fix health care is more government involvement. His proposal can only be described as a government takeover of health care.

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As Bob Cesca points out we have another epic fail in GOP hyprcrisy on health care reform. Jed at Daily Kos has more:

PENCE: This is not a deal that will go over well with the American people. They understand what a governmentment run insurance plan will mean.

PENCE: A government run insurance option that the President’s insisted on is going to amount to a government takeover of our health care economy.

PENCE (challenged by Andrea Mitchell on support for Medicare): Oh, no, I support Medicare, and have supported the program.

Do the Republicans have any idea just how stupid they sound when they simultaneously attack the idea of government health insurance and lavish praise on the largest government health insurance program in the nation?

Jed, I think they know but don't care. They've got their fixers in the main stream media to keep their message from looking like the hypocrisy that it is. Mitchell called him out mid-interview, and allowed him to finish up unchallenged. As long as that's the norm, these people have no reason to fear going on the TV and lying to the public.

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Mike Pence can't even manage to keep his spin straight during a single interview. h/t John Cole: Ignore the Words Coming Out of My Mouth.

Wolf Blitzer: As we've reported, Iran's state-run media is insisting that the U.S. is meddling, meddling in what it calls Iran's affairs and says that is intolerable. The Obama Administration strongly denies that. Let's bring in Republican Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana. He's the Chairman of the House Republican Conference, a key member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. You have introduced a resolution in Congress to support the dissidents - what you call the dissidents in Iran. Would that be seen as meddling, Congressman, in Iranian affairs?

Congressman Mike Pence: Well, I'm not really worried how it would be seen by the tyrants in Tehran. What I'm interested in doing is what Americans have done throughout our history, and that is to stand with those and to give encouragement to those that are courageously standing for free elections, free expression, for democracy. And it is hard to look at these past five day and the images have been so well covered here on CNN and across the internet and not be deeply moved by the courage of people that are at least risking their liberties and probably risking their lives for free and fair elections and democracy.

Blitzer: So specifically, Congressman what do you want the President to say and do?

Pence: Well look, I appreciate the fact that the President said the protesters have a right to be heard and respected and I appreciate the fact that he said he is troubled but I respectfully disagree with the administration's decision to essentially draw the line at not meddling and not interfering.

Look, the cause of America is freedom. And in that cause, we must never be silent. And if the President wants to draw the line and say that we are not going to stand with those brave citizens of Iran who are taking to the streets these last five days on behalf of democracy, on behalf of the freedom of speech and free elections, then I think the Congress behind me ought to take up a resolution that very simply expresses the support of the American people, through their elected representatives, for the people of Iran who are taking a stand for freedom.

Wolf, I really believe we may have an opportunity for a fresh start here, not with the tyrants in Tehran, not with Ahmadinejad, who even looks at what this administration is doing and accuses them of meddling, but rather with the good and decent and courageous people of Iran who are stepping forward and risking their liberty and their lives for principles that we as Americans cherish.

Blitzer: The President was on CNBC in an interview and he said the differences between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi may not necessarily be as significant as a lot of folks on the outside are hoping they are. I'm going to play a little clip for you. Listen to this.

President Obama [clip]: Although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, that the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States.

Blitzer: Is he right, Congressman?

Pence: Well, look, I don't think we should be in the business of endorsing the opposition candidate. What I want the Congress of the United States to do, and frankly what I would like to see the President of the United States of America do, is speak a word of support to the people of Iran. Those demonstrators, those soccer players playing in South Korea, at least for half of the game, are wearing the green arm bands. They are walking out onto the streets of Tehran and they're taking a stand. I would suggest not so much for a person, but for a principle. It is the principle of free and fair elections; it is the principle of a free and independent press, the freedom of association.

We ought to affirm the fact that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iranians are risking their liberty and even perhaps their lives to take a stand upon the values which we have really founded this nation. But again, the President can draw the line where he wants. I'm working with Republicans and Democrats here on Capitol Hill to give the opportunity for the American people to be heard through their elected representatives. I think Congress ought to pass a resolution that says to the people of Iran who are standing for freedom and free elections, that we support you. And that's the message that Americans have sent around the globe for generations.

Blitzer: We got to leave it there, Congressman. Good luck. Thanks very much.

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Old freedom lovin' Mike Pence is going to introduce a resolution supporting the dissidents protesting in Iran. Couldn't possibly be for partisan reasons coming from the likes of Pence, could it?

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David Shuster's Hypocrisy Watch for June 4, 2009. Shuster hits the Republicans for complaining about the current war funding bill when they had no problems with funding H.R. 2206 two years ago.