Every day that shouting, orchestrated right wing mobs disrupt town halls is also one less day to discuss single payer. It's the basic *run out the clock* scenario that the right wing mobs have practiced for decades. If they cannot win, they will incite violence.
Hat tip to
digby:
I hate to beat a dead horse, but this is the real purpose of these protests. They want Democrats to be scared and cancel their events. They did it
in 1994. They did it
in 2000. It works.
This is predictable. After all, they are following the 1994 playbook and they did the same thing then.
This is from the PBS timeline of the Clinton health care debate:
July 22, 1994 - Trying to win back the kind of political support that brought them to the White House, the administration plans a bus trek across America to generate their own grassroots message to Congress for reform. A kickoff rally in Portland, Oregon, is marred by anti-Clinton protesters. When the first buses reach the highway they find a broken-down bus wreathed in red tape symbolizing government bureaucracy and hitched to a tow truck labeled, "This is Clinton Health Care."
The anti-bus trek protests are the crowning success of the No Name Coalition and especially of the conservative political interest group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). By the time the ill-fated bus caravan takes to the highways, CSE operatives, working closely -- and secretly -- with Newt Gingrich's Capitol Hill office and with Republican senators, have mapped out plans to derail the Reform Riders wherever they go.
July 23, 1994 - Following several days of anti-Hillary rhetoric on local talk shows, Hillary Clinton -- at a bus rally in Seattle -- is confronted by hundreds of angry men shouting that the Clintons are going to destroy their way of life, ban guns, extend abortion rights, protect gays, and socialize medicine. When she finishes speaking and tries to leave the rally, her limousine is surrounded by protesters. Each of the four caravan routes becomes an expedition into enemy territory -- with better-armed, better-prepared, better-mobilized anti-Clinton protesters at each stop along the way. Local reform groups and caravan organizers are forced to cancel scheduled stops because of implicit threats of violence.
I'm sure the Democrats all remember this and are prepared for it this time. Right?
If you haven't read the entire
PBS timeline on how health care reform was derailed in 1994 recently, do yourself a favor and read it. The legislative side has an eerily familiar feel to it, especially the part where the Democrats in the Senate preen egomaniacally while selling out reform to the insurance industry and the Republicans.
You'll recall that the Republicans' consciously pumped Whitewater in the press and to create a distraction for the public and fuel mass protest among their own base. It's a sign of their impotence that the best they could come up with this time was a fringy clown show like the birthers, but it's certainly done its job among the 58% of Republicans who now aren't sure if Obama is actually an illegal alien. This stuff is evergreen.
There are attempts now to organize counterinsurgencies at these town hall meetings. This is understandable; however, it will not recapture the valuable time that will inevitably be lost for the few weeks that remain in August to have substantive discussion. The right wingers' ONLY mission is to shut down all town halls across the country for the remainder of August. They have received their schedules, their assault routes, their shouting points. They have been programmed for one mission only, and that is to grind any discussion of health care for everyone to a screaming end.
We cannot expect to have any meaningful dialog about health care in the traditional town hall venue.We must implement the skills that the Obama campaign perfected so well, to organize virtual town halls with our members of Congress by teleconferencing and by internet. Dates, times and instructions for constituents should be widely publicized, and announced by President Obama directly from the White House in a televised news conference.
We have no time to lose. Today is August 7. The screaming right wing hate mobs have 24 more days to steal from our health care discussion.
It's time we change our tactics.
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