WASHINGTON — The memo distributed to House Republicans this week was concise and blunt, listing talking points and marching orders: “Because of Obamacare, I Lost My Insurance.” “Obamacare Increases Health Care Costs.” “The Exchanges May Not Be Secure, Putting Personal Information at Risk.” “Continue Collecting Constituent Stories.” 
 
 The document, the product of a series of closed-door strategy sessions that began in mid-October, is part of an increasingly organized Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Republican strategists say that over the next several months, they intend to keep Democrats on their heels through a multilayered, sequenced assault. 
 
 The idea is to gather stories of people affected by the health care law — through social media, letters from constituents, or meetings during visits back home — and use them to open a line of attack, keep it going until it enters the public discourse and forces a response, then quickly pivot to the next topic. 
 
 For a House more used to disarray than methodical game plans, the success so far has been something of a surprise, even to the campaign’s organizers. 
 
 “Yeah, there is a method being followed here,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess, a Texas Republican involved in the effort, “but, really, these stories are creating themselves.” 
 
 First it was the malfunctioning website, HealthCare.gov, then millions of insurance policy cancellation notices sent to individuals with plans that did not meet the requirements of the health law. Earlier this week, the House aired allegations that personal data is insecure on the Internet-based insurance exchanges. 
 
 At a congressional field hearing set for Friday in Gastonia, N.C., the line of attack will shift to rate shocks expected to jolt the insurance markets in the next two years. Coming soon: a push to highlight people losing access to their longtime physicians and changes in Medicare Advantage programs for older people. 
 
 The effort has its roots in a strategy developed last spring, when House Republican leaders — plagued by party divisions that were thwarting legislative accomplishments — refocused the House’s committees on oversight rather than on the development of new policies. 
 
 Rob Borden, a general counsel to Representative Darrell Issa of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, moved to a newly created position that reported jointly to Speaker John A. Boehner and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader. Mr. Borden’s task was to coordinate and monitor oversight activities across separate committees to make sure they are not overlapping or undercutting one another. 
 
 That aggressive campaign, which produced numerous hearings on the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, as well as on I.R.S. scrutiny of conservative groups, is now increasingly consumed by the health care fight. House Republican leaders empowered four committees — oversight, Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and the Workforce — to take the lead, with support from other panels, such as the Science and Homeland Security Committees, which have examined computer security. 
 
 Mr. Cantor and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, another member of the Republican leadership, have also leaned on all 231 House Republicans. A 17-page “House Republican Playbook” walks members through “messaging tools” like talking points, social media tactics and “digital fliers”; details lines of attack; offers up a sample opinion article for local newspapers; and provides an extensive timeline on the health care law and an exhaustive list of legislative responses that have gone nowhere. 
 
 A message of the week is presented to the Republican members at the beginning of each week, Ms. McMorris Rodgers said. A “Call to Action” email chain distributes relevant breaking news. A new website, gop.gov/yourstory, is collecting anecdotes from each member. 
 
 The goal, according to Ms. McMorris Rodgers, is to use all the “Republican voices we have in the House, the media markets in all the districts we represent, to take our message all over the country.” 
 
 “It penetrates,” she said. “It’s powerful.” 
 
 To Democrats, especially in the White House, the power of the effort stems from using anecdotes to paint a fundamentally misleading picture. ||||| Ted Cruz (Steve Pope/Getty Images) 
 
 In 2012, the meta-pundit narrative turned on whether the election would be a choice between two visions for the future (as Dems hoped) or a referendum on the anemic Obama status quo (as Republicans predicted). The outcome surprised observers who thought the weight of the bad economy made the latter inevitable. 
 
 Now Democrats are going to attempt a repeat performance around Obamacare, at a time when the law’s travails have triggered widespread predictions that it, too, will serve as the focus of a referendum, just as the Obama economy was supposed to last year. 
 
 I’m told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a new campaign designed to refocus the debate on the Republican position on health care, which Dems will widely label as “Cruz Care.” 
 
 With Ted Cruz set to roll out his own health plan — one that will probably look like the usual grab bag of GOP reform ideas, which just aren’t a reform alternative to Obamacare — Dems plan to tar GOP Senate candidates across the country with it, by hitting them as proponents of “Cruz Care.” Many GOP candidates also embraced Cruz’s Obamacare-driven government shutdown. 
 
 The “Cruz Care” campaign is grounded in a conviction that Republicans — and not a few D.C. pundits — are misreading public opinion on Obamacare. Dems believe that despite the law’s unpopularity, many voters don’t view the health care issue as a zero sum decision over whether Obamacare is good or bad. Rather, they can be persuaded to see this as choice — between fixing an admittedly imperfect reform and giving it a chance to work, and the GOP alternative, which is essentially to go back to the old system, where junk insurance and a lack of standards “exposed people to financial and medical calamity.” 
 
 “The polls all show that when you shift the conversation from `support or oppose’ to ‘fix versus repeal,’ Democrats have the advantage,” Matt Canter, a spokesman for the DSCC, tells me. Regular readers know I broadly agree polls show disapproval of the law does not equal support for the GOP position of repeal. 
 
 Republicans continue to maintain Obamacare will be nothing but a liability. “ObamaCare was designed with the intention of forcing millions of Americans from their current insurance into the ObamaCare exchanges,” says NRSC spokesman Brad Dayspring. “The same politicians and Washington insiders who promised that everyone could keep their health insurance and doctors if they wanted despite knowing and voting otherwise are now asking voters to trust them? Vulnerable Democrats face an ugly choice: Admitting incompetence or admitting that they lied.” 
 
 Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on ads about Obamacare in 2014, and huge sums will be spent on the Dem side to recast the debate as a choice between sticking with a flawed law and returning to the pre-reform status quo. This could play differently in different races, depending on how each vulnerable Senate Dem handles Obamacare. 
 
 While the punditry has focused on Dems supposedly “running away” from the law, what is really happening is they are adopting variations of the “keep and fix” message that will be central to the Dem approach next year. Dems like Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, and Mark Pryor are embracing various “fixes,” but they will be attacking GOP opponents for supporting repeal. Dems remain committed to sticking with the law, which could get tougher if it continues to experience problems, but easier if it works and coverage continues to expand. 
 
 Pundits will probably see this new messaging as a kind of political “lemons to lemonade” play. And to be sure, many Dems remain nervous about what the law will do to their prospects. But the new push from Dems is also about recasting the meta-pundit debate over Obamacare — it’s an effort to persuade the commentariat that while Obamacare may be unpopular, the GOP repeal stance is a liability, too. 
 
 As 2012 illustrated, getting commentators to view the debate over a major political albatross (whether it’s the economy or Obamacare) as a “choice” rather than a “referendum” is not easy. But as 2012 also illustrated, voters don’t always view things in the same terms the pundits do.
– If it sounds like Republicans are reading from the same playbook in their ObamaCare offensive, it's because they are. A memo sent to House Republicans this week detailed an unusually focused attack plan, the New York Times explains. Republicans are to focus en masse on one of the program's failings, then swiftly pivot to the next as soon as that narrative gains traction, constantly keeping Democrats on their heels. First they focused on the website, then on dropped plans, and next they plan to shift to rate shocks. "Yeah, there is a method being followed here," one rep says, "but really these stories are creating themselves." (This story, for example, must have been music to strategists' ears.) Democrats, meanwhile, have developed a counter-strategy: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a campaign contrasting ObamaCare with "CruzCare," in hopes of highlighting how limited Republican policy alternatives are, the Washington Post reports. Ted Cruz is actually planning to roll out his own plan, but Democrats expect it to be the a potpourri of standard-issue Republican policies, rather than a credible ObamaCare alternative.