Some products are so bad that no amount of advertising can sell them.  This also seems to be the case with ObamaCare.  The government watchdog group Judicial Watch uncovered documents detailing a $200-million propaganda campaign – specifically targeting blacks, Hispanics, and women – meant to change minds about ObamaCare.


It’s no surprise that there are certain groups and PR experts who want to promote the President’s signature policy achievement, and who could stand to gain from this campaign.  I fully support the right of citizens and groups to express their opinions, and to present information in the light of their choosing.


But here’s the problem(s):  According to the Judicial Watch press release this is a multimillion dollar, taxpayer-funded campaign.  The White House spent over a million dollars on online advertisements alone.  That’s right, the White House is using my money to push a propaganda campaign that I don’t support… and ironically, because I’m a woman, I’m in one of the target groups! 


There are so many things wrong with this.  First of all, the left has been praising ObamaCare’s perks for women since day one.  But they only tell part of the story.  American women are smart enough to hear both sides of an issue and make their own decision about what policies to support.  To try to sell women an oversimplified explanation of ObamaCare by omitting important consequences is just insulting. 


And to add injury to insult (see what I did there), the White House took money from taxpayers (many of them women) to fund this propaganda project.


I must ask: Was this a successful PR campaign?  If you are going to use my tax dollars for something, at least let it be something effective.  The answer, according to public opinion polls, doesn’t look good for the White House. 


Before this PR campaign, blacks, Hispanics, and women typically had higher-than-average rates of support for ObamaCare (which makes them interesting target groups for a PR campaign… I didn’t study PR, but it seems you might want to focus on raising support among groups that don’t already lean with you, like whites, men, or seniors), and those support rates haven’t changed dramatically.  Similarly, national averages haven’t changed much; most voters still continue to favor repealing the law


So it seems that this was a waste of money.  But worse, it was an abuse of power.