Following their protest of a CMS brochure explaining the benefits of health care reform to seniors on Medicare, GOP Senators have written a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius expressing their “profound concern” about a television campaign featuring Andy Griffith. Seizing on a blog post from Stephanie Cutter, which introduced the Griffith ad as an attempt at “correcting the record” about Medicare benefits, Sens. Coburn, Barrasso, McCain, Burr, and Thune are feigning indignation:

The Administration’s clam to “correct the record” is misleading and offensive. We can debate the relative merits of the new law, but co-opting public funds during a recession, to make a political, poll tested argument about the new law, is wrong. While we understand the intensity of the Administration’s faith in this new law, “correcting the record” through the use of a taxpayer-funded ad campaign is highly inappropriate and breaks with the spirit of the law.

The new law cuts nearly $530 billion in taxpayer dollars from the Medicare program and uses Medicare dollars to pay for those who are forced to buy federally-mandated health insurance.

Watch the ad in which Griffith assures seniors that their guaranteed Medicare benefits won’t be cut and lays out some of the benefits of reform:

Since Republicans spent taxpayer dollars conflating cuts in the private Medicare Advantage program with guaranteed benefits under Medicare, using federal dollars to unspin those myths makes sense, particularly since many seniors still have the wrong impression about the law. For example, according to the latest Kaiser Tracking Poll, a large number of seniors “mistakenly believe the law includes provisions that cut some previously universal Medicare benefits” and 36% think that the law creates ‘death panels.’ Also, only 14 percent of seniors know that the law will increase the Medicare Part A trust fund by 12 years “and nearly half (45%) of seniors think the health reform law will weaken the financial condition of the fund.
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The politics of attracting and keeping the senior vote are pushing the GOP to foolishly lash out against one of the most popular personality figures in American culture. They’re not necessarily accusing Andy Griffith of lying — standard benefits will be protected and the GOP actually supports some of the fraud provisions described in the ad — as much as they’re just trying to hold on to their narrative about the health care reform law.

Yesterday, Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected the federal requirement to purchase health insurance, becoming the first state in the nation to nullify a portion of the new health care law. Conservatives attached the ballot measure, known as Proposition C, to the state’s primary election and it passed easily, attracting more than 70% of the vote.

But the story Republicans will be telling this morning, namely that the voters have rejected the central tenet of Obamacare and that support for the law is on the decline, doesn’t accurately capture the reality of the situation. A majority of the voters in Missouri voted for Prop C, but most of these supporters were Republican or conservative voters who were coming out to cast their ballot in the state’s competitive GOP primaries. The results say more about the reactionary state of Republican politics and the erosion of GOP policies than about general anti-reform trends or the merits of the mandate.

After all, the notion of requiring everyone to purchase health care insurance as a means of pushing younger and healthier individuals into the system and lowering premiums for everyone, was originally a Republican proposal developed as an alternative to the Clinton health care plan. In 1993, Sen. John Chafee (R-RI), then head of the Senate Republican Task Force, had signed up half of the Republican Senators, including then-Republican Senate leader Bob Dole “for a phased in universal coverage plan that would require every individual to buy a policy.” The plan resembled the current health care law in other ways, offering subsidized coverage for poorer beneficiaries, requiring that insurers offer a standard benefits package and preventing issuers from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions.

Prominent GOP senators like Chuck Grassley (IA) and Judd Gregg (NH) continued to believe that individuals should take responsibility for their own health care costs throughout the years, co-sponsoring the bipartisan Wyden-Bennett health care plan, including the initiative in their own proposals, or publicly endorsing the measure on Fox News. But the politics changed during this reform debate, pushing GOP lawmakers to abandon their previously held positions in favor of repeal policies that would remove the incentive for healthier Americans to buy insurance and consequently increase premiums across the board.

Thus far, the success of this strategy has been limited to Missouri. Arizona — which has put an anti-mandate initiative on the ballot in November — may soon pass a nullification measure, but these states are the exception rather than the rule. In fact, nullification bills have been rejected or failed to pass in at least 26 states where conservatives “claimed legislators would defy federal law.”