GOP blitz against health care

I find this very worrying 

National Repubicans are planning to unleash a huge wave of robocalls tomorrow targeting dozens of House Dems and warning their constituents that Obama and Nancy Pelosi are plotting to “ram” their “dangerous” health reform plans through Congress.The robocalls — the first paid media by the NRCC’s new “code red” program, which targets Dems on health care — comes after Obama told Congress to pass reform via reconciliation.
The calls are meant to spook House Dems right at the moment when the White House and Dem leaders are about to undertake a grueling effort to round up support for what’s expected to be a hair-raisingly close vote. It warns constituents that the targeted House Dem risks supporting this “dangerous” move.

Not that this should be unexpected, just that I think it is unlikely that the organized left or the DCCC will be able to effectively counter this. Why? Because I think that they have already saturated their supporters with appeals for help and for pleas to join marches and make phone calls. And the supporters most likely to be concerned about health care are likely to be relatively unenthusiastic about the current bill, meaning that getting them involved in a last minute defensive scramble is going to be pretty tough.

Luckily, however, these are going to be robocalls. And if there is anything people hate more than this bill, it is being robocalled. Political scientists Green and Gerber find that robocalls are pretty useless, and even counter-productive in the context of turning out the vote. Hopefully the same dynamic plays here.

Also, I think it is worth pointing out that Jonathan Chait called this

You can imagine how this feels to conservatives. They've already run off the field, sprayed themselves with champagne and taunted the losing team's fans. And now the other team is saying the game is still on and theyhave a good chance to win. There may be nothing wrong at all with the process, but it's certainly going to feel like some kind of crime to the right-wing. The Democrats may not win, but I'm pretty sure they're going to try. The conservative freakout is going to be something to behold.

The concern though is that when the right-wing freaks out, the right-wing noise machine starts pounding. And when the machine starts pounding, the Democrats start losing the narrative. As noted by Kevin Drum

There's simply no liberal counterpart to Drudge and Fox and Rush: a conservative commentariat that concedes nothing, pounds home its points like a jackhammer, repeats its themes relentlessly, and has the ear of the Washington mainstream press in a way that liberal commentators don't. Dionne calls their approach the "audacity of audacity," and the press seems to take it as evidence of sincerity in a way that they don't with liberal arguments. As a result, even when they think conservatives are misguided the Washington press largely grants them the presumption that their beliefs are driven by deep and earnest heartland principles.

And the noise machine will be focusing on a few House Dems in particular, who are already in competitive districts, making their task all the easier. I don't like what's coming, and I'm not sure that passage by March 19 (which is the date suggested by a leaked memo) is soon enough to keep these members from wavering.