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Hoyer’s Web Site Pokes Fun at GOP

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) office has tried put an interactive and entertaining twist on Democratic claims that Republicans have been obstructionist and alarmist in the debate about health care reform.

Hoyer’s Web site features a new quiz asking participants to guess which decade a Republican quote disparaging social programs is from: the 1930s, the 1960s or the 2000s.

“Republicans say, ‘no,’ dramatically warning of an economic disaster and creating a socialist society that will take away our freedom and end America as we know it,” the narrator says over an image of Joseph Stalin in a video that precedes the quiz.

But Republicans made the same arguments in the 1930s about Social Security and in the 1960s about Medicare, the narrator continues.

“History has proved these Republican arguments wrong again and again. Still, they are foolishly up to their old tricks,” he says. “Republican attacks on health reform? It’s déjà vu all over again.”

At risk of spoiling the fun, the quiz pairs classics conservative slights, like a line from Ronald Reagan’s 1961 spoken word album “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine,” and a 1935 zinger from Rep. James Wadsworth (R-N.Y.), with more contemporary excerpts from outspoken health care reform detractors like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

There are 20 questions in all. See how you fare at identifying historic histrionics here.

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