After a protestor came armed with a gun to the President’s New Hampshire town hall meeting Tuesday, many are asking if the town hall meeting format has jumped the shark or if conservatives are overstepping the bounds of civilized society.
Even blogger Allahpundit, writing for the conservative Hot Air site, put gun rights health care reform opponent William Kostric in the “spiteful incendiary douchebag” category.
The worst part? According to a new book about the Secret Service, the number of daily threats against Obama is already four times the number Bush faced. Every pair of eyes diverted to watch this tool make his point about liberty is a pair that’s not watching the rest of the crowd.
A large segment of the American public are unhappy with the direction health care reform is taking on The Hill. A smaller, but more vocal and more publicized segment of the conservative base has promoted disruption and chaos at town hall meetings throughout the country.
Is the disruption of the public debate hurting conservative goals or dooming reform efforts during the month of town hall hell that is August?
Atlantic.com writer Marc Armbinder falls firmly within the “shame on organized disruption” camp.
Remember, the target audience for Republicans is Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. They won’t panic unless they perceive organic anxiety. The White House’s goal was to prevent the Blue Dogs from panicking. The swing constituents in these congressional districts aren’t angry Republicans, and the Blue Dogs know this. They’re political independents for whom the sanctity of the process is important. These are the type of voters who like President Obama because he appears willing to bring people together even though they don’t agree with their policies.
But NextRight’s Patrick Ruffini argues that organized opposition movements are acceptably disorganized in the public eye.
For the Bush Administration in mocking the anti-war movement, and Obama deligitimizing the “mob,” what both White Houses missed is that the general public has different sets of expectations for political leaders and opposition movements. Oppositions are supposed to be loud, vocal, off-message, inchoate. The President of the United States is supposed to have his stuff together.
But like the Bush Administration’s anti-war protests, the Obama administration is facing a vocal opposition who’s main points are impossible to safely ignore, Ruffini points out. “The public option is, at the very minimum, now perceived as divisive. As controversial. As anything but the sweetness and light upon which Obama uniquely depended to govern.”
It is becoming clear in some contexts that the opposition cannot be dismissed as corporate-funded, Republican-staffed, astroturf movements - the line the press has been happy to promote so far.
The New York Times reported that Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa) clearly faced a majority conservative, disenfranchised and unhappy audience at Tuesday’s town hall meeting.
The tired and most-often unverified media line that these are organized or paid agitators, not a grass-roots opposition, is getting threadbare as more meetings are met with higher levels of opposition – no mere seeding of the front ranks of the audience.
CNN political analyst David Gergen asks the question: Are town hall protests threatening health care reform?
Beneath the din it is also obvious that there is a growing bloc of voters on the right and a good many in the middle who are becoming passionately opposed to the overhaul of the health care system envisioned by liberal Democrats, especially in the House. It is the intensity of their feeling as much as the size of the crowd that may shape the voting on Capitol Hill in coming weeks.
Tags: Allahpundit, Arlen Specter, Atlantic.com, CNN, David Gergen, health care reform, Marc Armbinder, New York Times, NextRight, Patrick Ruffini, Town hall, William Kostric
It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people (honestly where can they go with a pre-condition).”
It’s funny how Statists are SO dismissive of freedom and assume that Govt bureaucracies with NO accountability will somehow be better than private sector concerns, which are at least hemmed in by both competition and govt oversight.
“nd who says that the “private sector” is always right” - Pathetic rationalization. Who says its always wrong and has to be replaced by single-payer? Obama said in 2003 he was for single-payer, which abolishes the private sector. Why this insistence on Govt-run healthcare? who says the govt is always right?
It’s also funny how statists ignore that Medicare is heading for bankruptcy, Medicaid is ripping off doctors so much they are pulling out of it, VA has had scandals and bad rep, and pretend its all hunky dory. Obama’s plan is just driving us over the cliff of fiscal insanity faster and does nothing to fix/reform much that is broken inthe govt healthcare system. instead, it spreads a broken system even thinner.
” with failures like the financial meltdown and Katrina but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.”
What a stupid comment. If you support a bad govt policy, that will make it work? Mao’s cultural revolution was popular, but it killed millions? so did it ‘work’?
“How does shouting someone down or chasing them out like a “lynch mob” advanced the debate, it does not. ”
It’s worked for the Democrats and liberals for 40 years. What a bunch of retarded hypocrites the liberals are. They know perfectly well these town halls are CREATING DEBATE, and they hate debate as much as segregationists hated civil rights and their ‘mobs’. Do they really think the American people are as stupid as that? Do they really think the American people who love freedom will just behave like sheep to the slaughter while they are robbed of their freedom and prosperity?
It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people (honestly where can they go with a pre-condition). And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait, Medicare and Medicaid and our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown and Katrina but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.
How does shouting down to stop the conversation of the healthcare debate at town hall meetings, endears them to anyone. Especially when the organizations that are telling them where to go and what to do and say are Republicans political operatives, not real grassroots. How does shouting someone down or chasing them out like a “lynch mob” advanced the debate, it does not. So I think the American people will see through all of this and know, like the teabagger, the birthers, these lynch mobs types AKA “screamers” are just the same, people who have to resort to these tactics because they have no leadership to articulate what they real want. It’s easy to pickup a bus load of people who hate, and that’s all I been seeing, they hate and can’t debate. Too bad.