POLITICO SMEARS OBAMACARE OPPONENTS
Just like the Tea Party participants, opponents of this administration’s government-run health care in Town Hall meetings are being labeled as unruly mobs set up and bused in by big (insurance) companies.
Grassroots people such as the Thomas Jefferson Club & Kitchen Table Patriots showed up in PA for a Town Hall meeting with Sen. Arlen Specter & Kathleen Sabelius. At this meeting, most of the liberals wore “Planned Parenthood” T-shirts or were 'bused in' from ACORN, and were not citizens of the community.
Dick Durbin sardonically touts “We will not be sucker-punched by Astroturfed campaigns”. While these politicians are dripping with contempt, they will answer to their constituents at the polling booths.
It goes on and on, but this RedState piece is brilliant:
Politico Smears ‘ObamaCare’ Opponents
Posted by Dan Cleary (Profile)
Monday, August 3rd at 3:13PM EDT
Promoted by Erick (Erickson). What the heck is an “anti-reform” protestor. No, it is “anti-Obamacare” protestor.
Politico, ever the objective source of political news and analysis, has provided a handy list of “5 Things to Watch During the Recess.” One in particular caught my attention because it was so egregiously loaded with bias:
#4: Who Will Come to the Tea Parties?
Anti-reform protesters, many of them veterans from the winter and spring tea party protests, are promising to swamp Democrats’ districts with a wave of anti-reform protest over the recess.
The threat is real, and Democrats, especially those in battleground districts, are more than a little rattled. Just as the “birthers” threaten to cause problems for GOP members over the break, conservative protesters have proven skilled in sabotaging their targets by crashing town halls and other public events, drowning out Democratic messages.
The net result is a chill: Democrats are holding smaller events with handpicked crowds.
But there’s a potential downside for Republicans, too.
Some of the protesters have crossed the line from dissent into abusiveness, and some Republican strategists, while excited by the prospects of an insurgency over the recess, have been alarmed by a smattering of ugly recent incidents.
The worst: One protester hung an effigy of Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. (D-Md.) outside his Eastern Shore district office last week.
“We don’t condone violence in any way,” wrote the editor of operationembarrassyourcongressman.com, a site that posts members’ public events and suggests a slate of anti-health care reform queries for protesters.
“Don’t harass, intimidate, or otherwise do anything threatening towards anyone! … Simply use your freedom of speech in public forums to accomplish our mission.”
“Anti-reform protestors…?” Yeah, that’s it, Politico. Millions of people across the country are rising up to protest true health care reform. Because if you are against ‘ObamaCare’ you must be against true reform, right? As Andrea Mitchell would say, we just don’t know what’s good for us.
“…many of them veterans from the winter and spring tea party protests…” In other words, us tea partiers are just rabble-rousers with too much time on our hands. Our knee-jerk reaction is to oppose things like high taxes, oppressive government, and job-killing, unfunded mandates. Why can’t we just give Obama a chance?
“Just as the “birthers” threaten to cause problems for GOP members over the break, conservative protesters have proven skilled in sabotaging their targets by crashing town halls and other public events, drowning out Democratic messages.” This is a perfect example of liberals using birthers to smear the entire conservative movement, despite the fact that even Media Matters(!) points out that many prominent conservatives have unequivocally denounced the birthers. And what is ‘crashing town halls’ supposed to mean, anyway? Town halls are not supposed to be propaganda outlets - they are forums where politicians answer questions from their constituents. Politicians should be there with open ears and taking notes, not be worried about having their message ‘drowned out’.
“One protester hung an effigy of Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. (D-Md.) outside his Eastern Shore district office last week.” Horrible, that. So this must be representative of all conservative protesters, right? Meanwhile, the Daily Kos condones referring to Bush as the “Torturer-in-Chief” and a war criminal, for example, but that’s not kooky, because - well, everyone knows that’s true. Right?
Sheesh.
