It’s becoming increasingly clear that both sides in the healthcare reform debate are talking past each other. Hardly surprising, I guess. But at the heart of this disconnect lies a very serious problem – a senior citizen problem. The townhall meetings aren’t being disrupted by long-haired, disheveled, tattooed, dope heads. Take a look at the crowds. Mom. Dad. Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Marge and Uncle Fred.

The 55+ demographic is the opposition to the Democrat’s rush to a government takeover of the American healthcare system – and they aren’t just upset. They’re scared and they’re mad, and they DO NOT trust the President, his minions, or the nimrods in Congress who vote on thousand-page bills without reading them – spending untold trillions on undefined shovel-ready government boondoggles, corporate bailouts, and ill-considered cap and trade programs likely to raise their energy costs by huge amounts. Now those same politicians tell them that they can provide more healthcare coverage to more people at no increased cost, and you’d better believe that the trust factor with this group is in the negative numbers and dropping faster Bill Clinton’s trousers in a sorority house.

The biggest problem the liberals are having in selling whatever-the-hell healthcare reform they’re peddling is that this particular group isn’t made up of the naive innocents who are easily charmed by the hopey changitude rainbows and unicorns that seduced the media and the terminal victims of Bush Derangement Syndrome during the campaign last fall. The last of the Greatest Generation and the majority of the Baby Boomers have been around the block a time or two and they learned a few things from the School of Experience. Many of these people lived thorough the Great Depression, and World War, and/or at least the Cold War, including some bad times, and some good ones. The Carter years and the Reagan years. They can tell the difference between a lump in the oatmeal and a lump in the breast, and they know which one can’t be ignored without dire results. Many of them are retired and computer literate. They’ve done the research for themselves; they can read and understand the information. Some of them were in fact, rocket scientists; many of them survived Woodstock and VietNam. They raised families and worked hard for whatever they have today. They are not stupid and they didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. They grew up asking the big questions and/or challenging the government. They aren’t about to stop now.

And that’s where the problem arises. This Administration has never come up against this kind of force and they aren’t prepared to defend their plan(s). Even Camille Paglia, brilliant liberal columnist for salon.com, challenges The One:

Obama’s aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land… I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy…. You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you’re happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really?

This group isn’t that easily lulled. When the President stands up in front of a greenhouse crowd (full of “plants”) and asserts, “We are not talking about cutting Medicare benefits” this audience doesn’t think, “Whew – we were concerned for a minute there.” Nope – this bunch immediately concludes, “Right – you’re not talking about it – you’re just planning to do it and hope we don’t notice.”

They’re noticing that the message coming from Washington doesn’t pass the smell test.

They understand that universal healthcare, a single-payer plan, or even a public-private option plan that promises to provide increased access and coverage for an additional 45 – 50 million people has to cost more. Yesterday in Bozeman, Randy Rathie of Ekalaka, confronted the President, “We keep getting the bull (about what’s going on), that’s all we get,” and said there’s no way to pay for health reforms without raising taxes. Obama replied by agreeing with Rathie, saying “I can’t cover another 46 million people for free,” but said he had promised not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000 a year. “For people like myself, who make more than ($250,000), there’s nothing wrong with me paying a little bit more to help people who make a little bit less,” he said. But his audience knows that those who earn over $250,000 a year could pay 100% of that income in taxes and it wouldn’t cover the cost of universal healthcare – so they KNOW – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that just like what has happened with Medicare and Social Security – that everyone will have to shoulder a bigger tax burden. And that isn’t working for them so much either.

They KNOW that government run healthcare will mean rationed healthcare. It’s a matter of math and logic. When Sarah Palin charges that the inevitable decisions about who gets or doesn’t get needed health care will be made by a bureaucratic “death panel”, this audience remembers Dick Lamm telling older Americans that they have an “obligation” to die so that the young and healthy can live. They know about Ezekial Emanuel’s writings on that subject and understand that is the basic philosophy of the White House insiders. They checked out Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), the “Angel of Death” who authored Section 1233 of HR3200 and learned that he is one of the most fervent proponents of Oregon’s Right to Die law. And somehow that just doesn’t inspire warm fuzzies in Grandma’s world.

The President has taken to the campaign trail to try to reverse the opposition to his bold plan to reform this country’s healthcare system. So far it doesn’t seem like he’s been able to convert the unbelievers. The Word has gone forth and fallen on deaf ears. Brother O’s Traveling Salvation Show* plays to the choir, but the congregation isn’t chiming in with the great “Amens”.

*H/T to my blogger buddy “pistolpetestoys”. Love it!