The Boy Who Cried S-CHIP?
October 8, 2007, 8:50pm
The 12-year-old boy who delivered the Democrats’ weekly radio address Sept. 29 has become the flashpoint in the debate over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Democrats tapped Graeme Frost of Baltimore to make the case for the S-CHIP program because he and his sister personally benefited from it after an accident that left him in a coma for a week. “I don’t know why President Bush wants to stop kids who really need help from getting CHIP,” Frost said days before Bush vetoed legislation to expand S-CHIP.
Conservatives immediately criticized Democrats for using a child to try to score cheap political points, and bloggers at The Corner, Free Republic and InsureBlog have been digging into Frost’s story and his family history. Here’s what they have reported:
- The Frost children were students at an exclusive private school before the accident, and Graeme Frost still is.
- The family owns a small woodworking business and the property where it is located.
- The Frosts live in an improved home of more than 3,000 square feet.
- And the mother works for a medical publisher that apparently doesn’t offer health insurance — but they could have purchased insurance on their own for much less than they are telling reporters smitten by a human-interest story.
As the narrative of the not-so-poor Frosts has gelled in online conservative quarters over the weekend, liberal bloggers have begun to strike back at the “scary” right for picking on a child and “stalking the family.”
Think Progress is calling it “a baseless smear campaign” that has distorted the facts about the Frosts. “Right-wing bloggers have been harassing the Frosts, calling their home numerous times to get information about their private lives. Compassionate conservatism indeed.”
The response from the right:
- Michelle Malkin: “When a family and Democrat political leaders drag a child down to Washington at 6 in the morning to read a script written by Senate Democrat staffers on a crusade to overturn a presidential veto, someone might have questions about the family’s claims. The newspapers don’t want to do their jobs. The vacuum is being filled.”
- Mark Steyn at The Corner: “Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a seventh-grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game. … And anytime I send my seven-year-old out to argue policy, you’re welcome to clobber him, too.”
Categories: Producer's Picks, Health, Weekly Radio Address, Vetoes
Subscribe to RSS
October 9th, 2007 at 5:41 am
[…] Others: The American Street, The Moderate Voice, Liberty Street, Attytood, The Anonymous Liberal, Macsmind, Empire Burlesque, State of the Day, AirCongress, Daily Kos, Lean Left, The Gun Toting Liberal™, The Mahablog, Jesus’ General, Wake up America, Unqualified Offerings, Political Radar, Obsidian Wings, protein wisdom, D-Day, Norwegianity, The Daily Whim, AMERICAblog, Sadly, No!, Take Our Country Back and Weekly Standard […]
October 11th, 2007 at 11:46 am
The issue at stake here is whether or not there should means testing for subsidies. The state of Maryland effectively subsidized the Frosts commercial real estate investment. If they’re meant to be representative recipients of the program, then it’s a program that subsidizes middle class risk. And maybe that’s not a program that taxpayers really want to fund.
Using the 12 year old child as a distraction is inexcusable. On both sides.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
[…] But why is it that political reporters only get curious when a conservative Joe America storms onto the scene? Why aren’t they just as curious when liberals trot out, say, a 12-year-old boy to give a national radio address? […]
October 21st, 2008 at 7:47 pm
[…] There’s a double standard at work at the Times regarding the private affairs of public citizens thrust into the political spotlight. Back in October 2007, Democrats paraded 12-year old Baltimore resident Graeme Frost as its poster boy for expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a government program to assist families without health insurance. The program helped Graeme after a car accident left him in comatose for a week. The Democratic Party pushed him into the spotlight to deliver the Democratic radio address on September 29, 2007 (hat tip K. Daniel Glover at Eyeblast.tv). […]