The 60 Plus Association has gotten the message out that conservative seniors have an alternative to the AARP.

The organization has been called the “conservative alternative to the AARP” either directly or by paraphrase in the National Journal, Washington Post, and Ohio’s WHIO News Talk Radio, as well as a half-dozen or more local news outlets.

McClatchey’s Oakland Tribune led a clearly biased and uneven article on the opposition, including 60 Plus, dismissing health care reform opposition as money interests and “millionaires.”

Much of the money and strategy behind the so-called grass-roots groups organizing opposition to the Democrats’ health care plans comes from conservative political consultants, professional organizers and millionaires, some of whom hold financial stakes in the outcome.

As for 60 Plus, reporter Margaret Talev clearly seeks to discredit and dismiss them as corporate and millionaire-funded special interest lobbying - and makes pains to point out their past affiliation with PhARMA.

60 Plus Association is a conservative senior advocacy group that wants to abolish the estate tax. Singer Pat Boone is the group’s national spokesman. Chairman Jim Martin started the group in 1992 with fundraising help from conservative direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie. It spent $1.5 million on TV ads opposing a health care overhaul in the last week.

Martin declined to identify his major donors. In 2006, he acknowledged that his group was getting funding from the pharmaceutical industry. But this year, pharmaceutical companies lead the spending spree on behalf of a health care overhaul.

“The shoe’s on the other foot,” Martin said. “They’ve gotten in bed with the White House.”

Talev shows her bias without irony, referring to opposition as “them” over and over, and seeking to discredit or dismiss each in tern as millionaires and industry interests. She gives the lie to her own lead in the fourth paragraph:

Still, supporters of a health care overhaul have outspent opponents by about 2-to-1 so far, according to Evan Tracey, of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks ad spending.

The opposition groups’ “names sound catchy and populist,” she writes, but they “finance ads targeting fears.”

At the very least, she does not censor out AFP President Tim Phillips’ critique of her own brand of sloppy leftist reporting:

“We’re out here saying the truth, which is costs are going to go up and quality is going to go down. And what’s the other side saying? ‘Oh, these are front groups, these are all rich people.’ The attack route’s not going to work. It’s not so far.”

Disgraced Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly refers to senior citizens as an “obstacle” as well as a “powerful and highly organized voting bloc” that President Obama must Woo.

First dibs to comment in her article, Seniors remain Wary of Health Care Reform, goes to the AARP, which is promoting reform - if not exactly what the President is selling.

“People have gotten more and more worried,” said Nancy LeaMond, a vice president at the 50-and-over advocacy group AARP, which will unveil a pro-reform TV and print ad campaign Monday. “They are very concerned about the myths they keep hearing that care will be rationed and they won’t have access to doctors.”

Connolly discredits 60 Plus by association, following that paragraph directly with a description of the conservative group’s tactics, meant clearly to imply they are spreading “myths.”

One mailing from the 60 Plus Association, which bills itself as a “conservative alternative to AARP,” warns that the proposed Medicare changes will mean “longer wait times at hospitals and doctors offices, less money for new treatments, restrictions on care, prescriptions and what’s best for you — the patient!” Officials at the Virginia-based group did not respond to several messages last week.

I wouldn’t either, from Ceci Connolly.

The rest of her report clearly puts 60 Plus in the “euthanasia” and “death panel” hysterical mob category.

Associated Content’s Mark Whittington, on the other hand, gives 60 Plus partial credit for killing the public option, which Obama hinted this past weekend wasn’t a lynchpin for his plan.

Under the jump headline, “Obamacare Sinking like a Great Ship,” Whittington writes, “Now it appears that the efforts of groups like the 60 Plus Association and the continuing ire being expressed at Congressional town hall meetings have had the effect of killing the public option provision.”

The remarkable thing is that every special interest, including the American Medical Association, the drug companies, and the AARP seemed to be on board or ready to be on board. Only one group of people had not been consulted. That would be the American people.

This remarkable spectacle of democracy in action will have far reaching effects. The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats have taken a hit that is metaphorically like something the late Bruce Lee might have inflicted. The prestige of the AARP, usually considered the guardian of senior citizens rights, has fallen. The 60 Plus Association, by opposing health care reform, will gain.