Tea Parties and Health Care

Say what you want to about the Tea Party crowd, they are turning into a force to be reckoned with. As lawmakers head back to their home districts and begin talking health care reform with their constituents, we’re seeing Tea Party-like gatherings organized to contribute to, and apparently, disrupt some of the public forums where health care reform is discussed.

Here in the Twin Cities, Twila Brase, longtime opponent of anything that even hints of government involvement in health care, sent out a notice from her Citizens Concerned for Health Care site alerting people of a Keith Ellison town hall meeting. I’ll share some YouTube of that, along with other examples, throughout this post.



Tea Party-type crowds at these events are becoming common. There was a well-known one in Missouri involving a soldier and Sen. Claire Msciascal’s staff. (He demanded an apology because, if I remember correctly, there’s nothing in the Constitution about the government providing health care.) There was also this event in Pennsylvania where Democratic Sen. Arlen Spector spoke.



(Sorry for the shaky video)

Talking Points Memo and Think Progress has been covering this story, and have posted a document which provides talking points to some of these groups. These include suggestions to shout down the speakers, stand up, “rattle them,” etc.

If you do watch the videos, note that some of these tactics are indeed being used. It seems to me (and watching such scenes can be very subjective) that in both the Specter forum and the Ellison forum, the Tea Party types are a minority. The Specter forum has quite a bit of shouting from the TP attendees; the Ellison meeting is more restrained. Minnesota Nice? Or maybe the fact that Ellison himself went person-to-person to get comments. It’s a little harder to shout when the person is right in front of you. In any case, note his politeness and attempts to quiet the crowd so the TP people have their say.

As we’ve explored here, there’s been a lot of crazy on the right wing side lately. Claims that Obama was born in Kenya, claims that he’s a racist (so I guess he hates half of himself), claims that health care reform will lead to euthanasia, and so on. The heat is rising, and some are not keeping their heads very well. Josh Marshall says this latest development is an example of “civic vigilantism.”

My feeling is that if these folks show up at meetings, they have every right to speak their minds and contribute to the discussion. However, shouting down speakers and trying to disrupt the events could further add to the right’s growing reputation of being a wild-eyed, fringe element in our society.



But on the other hand, there are a lot of folks out there who seem to have a problem with our President, for whatever reason. They’ve been fed a lot of misinformation and have been pushed to be angry and outraged. They are now organized to some degree, and determined to shout down pro-reform speakers without really listening to what they have to say. It’s a scary and unfortunate example of mob rule. And it could well be that this vocal minority is able to push the discussion to a point where the average voter just says, “Enough, a pox on both your houses.” At which point the Tea Party folks have won, because they’ve killed the support for change.