Hillarysworld

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Post Info
TOPIC: Voters send a message to Washington, and get an ugly response (WSJ 8/7/09) ‘You Are Terrifying Us’


Super Moderator

Status: Offline
Posts: 228
Date:
Voters send a message to Washington, and get an ugly response (WSJ 8/7/09) ‘You Are Terrifying Us’
Permalink  
 


We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.

They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube.

In his first five months in office, Mr. Obama had racked up big wins—the stimulus, children’s health insurance, House approval of cap-and-trade. But he stayed too long at the hot table. All the Democrats in Washington did. They overinterpreted the meaning of the 2008 election, and didn’t fully take into account how the great recession changed the national mood and atmosphere.

And so the shock on the faces of Congressmen who’ve faced the grillings back home. And really, their shock is the first thing you see in the videos. They had no idea how people were feeling. Their 2008 win left them thinking an election that had been shaped by anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and pro-change feeling was really a mandate without context; they thought that in the middle of a historic recession featuring horrific deficits, they could assume support for the invention of a huge new entitlement carrying huge new costs.

The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he’s a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that’s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, “You are terrifying us.”

What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen’s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren’t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss—loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don’t.

People are not automatons. They show up only if they care.

What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, accused the people at the meetings of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that.” (Apparently one protester held a hand-lettered sign with a “no” slash over a swastika.) But they are not Nazis, they’re Americans. Some of them looked like they’d actually spent some time fighting Nazis.

Then came the Democratic Party charge that the people at the meetings were suspiciously well-dressed, in jackets and ties from Brooks Brothers. They must be Republican rent-a-mobs. Sen. Barbara Boxer said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that people are “storming these town hall meetings,” that they were “well dressed,” that “this is all organized,” “all planned,” to “hurt our president.” Here she was projecting. For normal people, it’s not all about Barack Obama.

Associated Press
Oj_noonan
Oj_noonan

The Democratic National Committee chimed in with an incendiary Web video whose script reads, “The right wing extremist Republican base is back.” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse issued a statement that said the Republicans “are inciting angry mobs of . . . right wing extremists” who are “not reflective of where the American people are.”

But most damagingly to political civility, and even our political tradition, was the new White House email address to which citizens are asked to report instances of “disinformation” in the health-care debate: If you receive an email or see something on the Web about health-care reform that seems “fishy,” you can send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. The White House said it was merely trying to fight “intentionally misleading” information.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Wednesday wrote to the president saying he feared that citizens’ engagement could be “chilled” by the effort. He’s right, it could. He also accused the White House of compiling an “enemies list.” If so, they’re being awfully public about it, but as Byron York at the Washington Examiner pointed, the emails collected could become a “dissident database.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574334623330098540.html



__________________
Stand up for what is right, even if you're standing alone.


Diamond

Status: Offline
Posts: 521
Date:
Permalink  
 

It's a shame what the USA has become because of these weak congress democratic pinheads. Well, I for one may be a little intimidated--but I'm fighting on! Bring on the smears!

This Durbin from IL is really pi**ing me off. I use to know his mother very well, who was always a very compassionate lady and did so much for children. But this spawn has lost all, (and I had very little to begin with), respect.

__________________


Moderator

Status: Offline
Posts: 135
Date:
Permalink  
 

Great article by Peggy Noonan.  Thanks for posting it.

__________________


Platinum

Status: Offline
Posts: 376
Date:
Permalink  
 

It is so scary. If one goes to a townhall meeting "well-dressed" that automatically makes them "angry mob"??? What kind of remark is that?

I am so sick of this crap. Pelosi and Boxer certainly are not anyone to judge.

Today our Florida senator resigned. He won't give a reason, but I am thinking maybe he is not happy with what is going on in government right now.  But if that is so, I prefer he had stayed to fight for us, not leave.

-- Edited by shadow on Friday 7th of August 2009 08:37:40 PM

-- Edited by shadow on Friday 7th of August 2009 08:38:34 PM

__________________


Administrator

Status: Offline
Posts: 2818
Date:
Permalink  
 

They are acting like total idiots.  Who the hell does the things that the Dems are doing?



__________________

4459303562_3f593359a2_m.jpg

Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.

Tweet this page Post to Digg Post to Del.icio.us


Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse
Powered by ActiveBoard