Democrats Plan Attack on Republican Repeal Effort [View All]

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Source: Washington Post

Democratic leaders in Washington plan to spend the next week doing what they all but refused to do during the 2010 midterm elections: mount a vigorous defense of President Obama’s health care legislation. The “all fronts” plan is a response to the decision by the new House speaker, John Boehner, to schedule a vote next Wednesday on a complete repeal of the health care legislation that Mr. Obama signed last March.

Senior Democratic officials said their effort will be managed by a rapid response operation modeled after the ones Mr. Obama used during his presidential campaign. That team will monitor Republican claims, send out fact-checks and deploy a team of surrogates to get their views on television.

Paid television advertisements will be run “as warrants,” said one senior Democrat, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the program. Organizing for America, the president’s chief political apparatus, will host phone banks and will schedule events featuring people who would lose their benefits if the health care law were repealed.

“We will make clear to the American people, that as their first order of business, Republicans have decided not to focus on jobs and deficit reduction, but on re-litigating partisan battles — that, if successful, would eliminate help for our job-creating small business and explode the deficit,” said Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

Read more: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/democrats-plan-attack-on-republican-repeal-effort/