In what is probably the best response so far to a town hall right-wing nut at an event in Dartmouth, Rep. Barney Frank confronted a woman who compared President Obama to a Nazi.

Let's just say she picked the wrong person; Frank gave her a public spanking like few you'll see.

But it comes a little late in the game.

Democrats are finally waking up to the fact that Republicans don't want anything at all to do with health-care reform. It goes against core conservative values.

It took MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on last Sunday's Meet the Press to point out that conservatives want to dismantle the social safety nets of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Ronald Reagan was peddling the idea when he was governor of California, which makes it all the more surprising that liberals continue to expect Republicans to meet them halfway on health-care reform.

Unfortunately, the damage is done.

In one poll, more than 40 percent of people surveyed believed that the "death panel" section of the health-care reform bill has been removed due to public outrage at the town hall meetings.

Considering it was never there to start with, it's a remarkable finding.

And it demonstrates just how badly President Obama has mangled the message on the country's need for health-care reform.

Some liberals are hoping that Obama can somehow turn the story around, as he so often did in the campaign.

It's unlikely.

As Hillary Clinton pointed out only weeks before Obama was elected, it's going to be hard for him to reform health care when it's unclear what he wants.