More GOP crazy: "Town hells!"

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The Republican operatives fighting President Obama's health insurance reform proposals are reaching new lows. (OK, not quite Birther lows, but getting there.) The National Republican Congressional Committee is boasting that the GOP is turning Democrats' summer-recess "town hall" meetings into "town hells." Way to engage in productive political discourse, fellas!

In Connecticut one lout suggested Sen. Chris Dodd commit suicide as a cure for his recently announced prostate cancer. "How come we don't just give Chris Dodd painkillers? Like a handful of them at a time! He can wash it down with Ted Kennedy's whiskey!" Maryland Rep. Frank Kratovil was hung in effigy. Rep. Tim Bishop needed a police escort back to his car. In Austin, Texas, a blue outpost in that red state, Rep. Lloyd Doggett was shouted down by abusive GOP protesters.

Doggett told ABC's Jake Tapper "the Republican Party has coordinated this apparent outrage." But the head of former Rep. ####### Armey's so-called Freedom Works, the GOP Astroturf organization that helped organize the April 15 tea parties, insists "you can't fake this sort of outrage outside the Beltway." (It's nice to have the admission you can fake it inside the Beltway.)

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, echoed that assertion on Twitter, tweeting Tapper: "You can't manufacture the kind of anger many Americans feel toward their government right now. There are many parallels to '94."

Scarborough's perspective actually helps. If we look back at the class of '94 -- Scarborough's scandal-plagued class -- as an example, in fact Obama may be in good shape. The GOP Class of '94 rode a phony wave of anti-Clinton outrage to control of Congress, but two years later, after their ideas were exposed as dead-end (orphanages for welfare families, anyone?) the president they opposed was reelected overwhelmingly. Let's hope the Democrats can course-correct enough to avoid a '94-style drubbing, but if Scarborough's right, Obama will get a second term and a second shot at his agenda anyway.

But the real lesson here is: The Democrats may well lose seats in 2010 if they don't deliver on what they promised. Healthcare reform was a cornerstone of every leading Democratic contender in 2008; it was key to the forward-looking Obama economic agenda that made John McCain look even more lost and left-behind than he actually is (which is saying a lot). Democrats consistently fail to deliver on campaign promises to their base, where even if Republicans screw their cultural-conservative base -- George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did a great job making abortion illegal! -- they do deliver on tax cut and deregulation promises to their corporate masters.

Tuesday night Rachel Maddow made a comparison I'd been thinking about: between the current "Town Hells" and the 2000 "Brooks Brothers riot," in which paid GOP staffers, posing as grass-roots activists, stormed the Miami elections office conducting the recount of presidential votes to try to stop it -- and they succeeded. Maddow noted that many Democrats wondered why their party didn't mobilize them to protest in Florida the same way, and I certainly wondered that too. Nine years later, I'm signed up on various Obama, DNC, MoveOn.org and other liberal mailing lists, and I get healthcare reform alerts, but I'm still waiting for an aggressive activist push to counter the GOP's healthcare lies -- from silly claims that Obama's plan forces "end of life" counseling on seniors, to Arthur Laffer's sad, bewildered denunciation of the Democrats' plan for a government takeover of Medicare and Medicaid -- which are, of course, government programs.

The stupid is accelerating, but I'm not sure that a progressive pushback is accelerating at the same rate (Jane Hamsher's efforts aside; if I'm missing something, please let me know in comments). If Obama can't deliver real healthcare reform, Scarborough might be right: It could be 2010 all over again, but 2012 wouldn't look anything like 1996 for the Democrats.

-- Joan Walsh

http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politic.../walsh/politics

[SMOKE 1,426]

yah its a real pisser people found out what obama & pelosi were trying to push down our throats.

face it dude the bill got blocked in it current form by DEMS. & noone wants it, in its current form.

Edited August 5, 2009 by SMOKE

[natty bumppo 297]

freedom of speech sux doesn't it ...

ahh ... another prime example of a serious and unbiased article from salon

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

There's some crazed people about - I heard Obama answering a question from a member of the public whose question essentially amounted to "So I heard that our old people will be forcibly euthanased, what's going on there?".

Edited August 5, 2009 by Private Pike

[one...two...tree 2,762]

There's some crazed people about - I heard Obama answering a question from a member of the public whose question essentially amounted to "So I heard that our old people will be forcibly euthanased, what's going on there?".

These thugs will stop at nothing to deceive the public.

[SMOKE 1,426]

These thugs will stop at nothing to deceive the public.

i know just look at all these anti GOP threads. thugs i tell ya thugs

[one...two...tree 2,762]

These thugs will stop at nothing to deceive the public.

i know just look at all these anti GOP threads. thugs i tell ya thugs

Mike, I'm specifically talking about these goons that show up at these town hall meetings pretending to be regular citizens when they have a specific agenda. Is that democracy for you? Because that's what thugs do.

[natty bumppo 297]

There's some crazed people about - I heard Obama answering a question from a member of the public whose question essentially amounted to "So I heard that our old people will be forcibly euthanased, what's going on there?".

did obama answer by playing the race card ... followed by an invitation to hoist a brew?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

There's some crazed people about - I heard Obama answering a question from a member of the public whose question essentially amounted to "So I heard that our old people will be forcibly euthanased, what's going on there?".

did obama answer by playing the race card ... followed by an invitation to hoist a brew?

I think his answer was actually along the lines of "we don't have enough people to do that".

[one...two...tree 2,762]

This is an indefensible act of thuggery. Stop trying to make it a ####### for tat, bullsh!t. It's dirty politics, plain and simple.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Doesn't seem to me that there's any actual violence or intimidation associated with this.

Dirty politics, sure. Same old ####### though.

[natty bumppo 297]

These thugs will stop at nothing to deceive the public.

i know just look at all these anti GOP threads. thugs i tell ya thugs

Mike, I'm specifically talking about these goons that show up at these town hall meetings pretending to be regular citizens when they have a specific agenda. Is that democracy for you? Because that's what thugs do.

as if this type of behavior hasn't been going on for years from both camps ....

is there a difference between USC types? regular vs irregular

[mawilson 2,133]

These thugs will stop at nothing to deceive the public.

i know just look at all these anti GOP threads. thugs i tell ya thugs

Mike, I'm specifically talking about these goons that show up at these town hall meetings pretending to be regular citizens when they have a specific agenda. Is that democracy for you? Because that's what thugs do.

as if this type of behavior hasn't been going on for years from both camps ....

is there a difference between USC types? regular vs irregular

According to Steven, Dems are regular citizens and GOP - irregular.

[natty bumppo 297]

These thugs will stop at nothing to deceive the public.

i know just look at all these anti GOP threads. thugs i tell ya thugs

Mike, I'm specifically talking about these goons that show up at these town hall meetings pretending to be regular citizens when they have a specific agenda. Is that democracy for you? Because that's what thugs do.

as if this type of behavior hasn't been going on for years from both camps ....

is there a difference between USC types? regular vs irregular

According to Steven, Dems are regular citizens and GOP - irregular.

he can probably post a link to a federal gov't website as proof too

[Peikko 1,575]

The divisiveness goes both ways - there isn't one side that is clean and one that is dirty.