Debunked Obamacare Woman Complains she is Being Silenced-- as Part of $2 Million Ad Campaign by Koch Bros- Daily Kos

Tue Mar 04, 2014 at 08:34 AM PST

Debunked Obamacare 'victim' doubles down on victimhood

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/04/1281760/-Debunked-Obamacare-victim-doubles-down-on-nbsp-victimhood

by Joan McCarterFollow

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She's back.

You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity is responding to the debunking of their anti-Obamacare ad featuring leukemia patient Julie Boonstra by pouring $300,000 more into another ad. This ad will not answer to the facts presented by critics of the ad, but will feature Boonstra, again, as victim because—irony alert—she's being silenced.

In the new ad, Ms. Boonstra says the attacks on her credibility have been devastating and accuses Mr. Peters of trying to silence her. “All I want is to be listened to,” she says in the commercial. “There are thousands of people out there who are hurting because of Obamacare.” [...] Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by the billionaires David and Charles Koch, said the organization was standing by its ads and would not be deterred by criticism from Democrats like Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, who last week called the first Michigan ad “absolutely false.”
“We are completely comfortable about the accuracy of every item in our ads,” said Mr. Phillips, who suggested that Mr. Reid was trying to start a political dispute to shift attention from what he called an effective advertising campaign.

Reality check: of course Boonstra is being listened to, thanks to the $2 million that the Koch brothers is pouring into this campaign, $300,000 on this ad alone. She's being listened to and questioned about the factual statements she's making—the implication that she's losing her doctor and that she's paying so much more money out of pocket—which turned out not to be true. That's what is in question, not her free speech. If she were doing an ad that told the truth, that she has an ideological problem with Obamacare and is opposed to it because of that, no one would be questioning her. 

But that doesn't make for a compelling ad. No, there has to be victim and it has to scare people. If Boonstra isn't a victim of Obamacare, she's the victim of mean people who are trying to silence her. Because she "believes" she's being hurt by Obamacare, even though she cannot or will not provide any proof that this is true.

And so we have another professional conservative victim. There's nothing conservatives love to do more than to pretend that they are being persecuted and silenced. They particularly like to do that by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to blanket the airwaves with their complaints, so that the whole world can hear how they're being silenced.

Originally posted to Joan McCarter on Tue Mar 04, 2014 at 08:34 AM PST.

Also republished by Daily Kos.