Yeah, we can’t have the voters voicing their displeasure in public. Let’s go back to invitation only events, where all the speakers are vetted and all the questions are pre-screened.
That damn rabble and their pointed questions, why do we have to put up with them? Who let them out of the ‘free speech zones’, anyway?
“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
I guess the Pubbies have taken the old adage to heart.
You’re missing the point of these back in the district/constituent events. The point isn’t to have a substantial debate on the issues. The point is to pretend to be interested while senior citizens tell you how much they love you and bitch because their social security check is late. Then, you write up a press release:
“Congressman Blowhard met with members of the district in Waynesboro on July 5 in the first of a series of town hall meetings. Congressman Blowhard explained what he was doing for the people of the 6th District and listened to community concerns.”
The papers print it, you stick it in your constituent newsletter along with some photos from of you shaking hands with a veteran or holding a baby.
You don’t want to read a newspaper story that says something like:
“Congressman Blowhard’s town meeting in Waynesboro last night erupted into a brawl, as opponents of the President’s Social Security plan, which Congressman Blowhard supports, accused him of wanting to starve old people to death. Congressman Blowhard was rushed from the scene after he attacked one of the protestors, calling her a “hippy communist terrorist freak”. The Congressman’s office could not be reached for comment.”
It just doesn’t help you politically as much the second way.
Upon reading the OP, the first thing that came to my mind was the Gray Panthers attack in Chicago against (then-Rep) Dan Rostentowski. The idiots that attacked his limo were opposed to a financially sensible and Medicare Presription Drug Bill.
Motto of the story: Politicians will always cowtow to angry voters - Even when that anger is unfounded and based on propoganda. Finding leadership, or conviction in an elected official (of either party) is about as commonplace as finding pearl in a bag of oysterette crackers.
Look, I don’t think closed events are exactly ideal. But opponents of the administration cannot have their cake and eat it too.
I seem to recall efforts to disrupt events recently that weren’t intended to be two-way conversations, and haven’t historically been. The inauguration comes to mind, as well as the Republican National Convention.
For all of the considerable faults of the Republican Party, I don’t recall any of our activists actually disrupting a recent Democratic convention. If this indeed happened, I’d love to be corrected, but in any case the incidents weren’t newsworthy like those leftist activists that got to the floor of our event.
When crap like that happens, the impulse is for politicians to more tightly control the event so that they won’t be embarassed again by a roving loon. It’s a regrettable impulse, but an understandable one. The unfortunate outcome of all of this is closed doors, more hostility, and less civil discussion.
Do you want to be invited to meetings, and have your voices heard? Maybe the way to get that done would be to ask for an invitation, seek consensus, and leave the picket signs and costumed freaks at home.
It wasn’t long ago that the political right was lampooned in America as a bunch of shrill, uncompromising, reactionary wackos. Goldwater’s supporters were dismissed as old ladies in tennis shoes. We started winning when we put on better clothes, developed a sense of humor, and demonstrated a talent for compromise and governance when we actually won elections.
Right now the left has the reputation as the poorly dressed freaks with the chip on their shoulder. You might want to try to shake that.
While you’re at it, recent comments by Grover Norquist, a close adviser of Cheney’s and the ideological engine behind “strangling government in the bathtub”, has called The Greatest Generation un-American. Link
One word: Huh?
See the career, please, of one Ronald Reagan, who wasn’t ashamed of cutting a deal if it moved his agenda a step along.
I’ve met Norquist, and he’s just creepy and annoying. But rhetoric by both sides aside, it’s a question of image. Politicians, on both sides of the aisle, are worried about their reputations and their appearances, and so they don’t want to face hostile crowds. If they know that something like social security is going to bring out hecklers and people asking embarrassing questions, they’re going to change their events to minimize the risk of that.
He does have a point there; the era was characterized by an anomalous level of naive faith in government.
Mr. Moto: See the career, please, of George W. Bush. You know, one who’s been President more recently than 1988.
Reagan was certainly charming, and perhaps that’s what you mean by “sense of humor”. Today’s conservative “sense of humor” seems best characterized by Mallard Fillmore, unless you have an example you prefer.
A talent for governance, you say? Reagan tripled the national debt and kept the government growing, while tossing in a dog-wag war and supporting torture regimes. Dubya’s done the same, but on a grander scale. What’s this “talent” you refer to?
So, it is now at the point that Pubbies don’t even pretend to listen to their constituents? They take orders from Rove and and House and Senate leadership, and that’s it? That the Social Security plan is so weak that they can’t even argue for it?
We’re not talking a ceremony here, or a carefully scripted photo-op like a Convention is these days. But I guess those who they view as sheep to be hoodwinked have seen through the crap and are revolting, and they can’t handle it any more.
I wish we had a system like Parliament. Bush would get laughed out of Washington the first question time.
Those Republicans… they’re just running scared after the Democrats stunning victory in 2004, where MoveOn used these same tactics. Um… yeah.
Look, I’m no big pubbie supporter, nor am I a big fan of the Social Security plan. However, if you think you’re “winning” because they’re going to shut you out and prevent your planned protest, you’re kidding yourself.
Of course they listen to their constituents, and if you’ve noticed, Bush’s social security plan isn’t really getting anywhere. There’s a reason the congressional leadership has said, “There’s no way we’re voting on this till after the 2006 elections”.
But at the same time, when the president is in your party, and he wants something, and when your party leaders want something, you have to listen. You don’t go bucking the leadership without cause.
Further, lets say I’m a Republican congressman who doesn’t like the President’s social security plan, and, if it came to a vote, I’d vote against it. I’m still not going to want to hear criticism of the plan in a public forum, because that hurts the President, which hurts the party, which hurts me.
Since when does any politician respond to any question he doesn’t want to? The idea of accountability is and always has been completely foreign to the political mind.
I take very little glee when the party in power runs from direct inquiry because it is inconvenient to their politics. I think the whole country loses when its elected leaders promote programs that cannot stand up under pointed questioning.
Funny, in that list of people you’re concerned about being hurt I’m seeing a distinct lack of anything like “my constituents”.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’d say in response that the Democrats are afraid to discuss Social Security at all. How else do you explain the blind hostility to even think about some sort of reform?
I am sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. Lets start talking reform that addresses real problems, and perhaps you might get some cooperation, at the moment I see a proposal on the table that may be philosophicaly orgasmic for the neocons, but it does nothing what-so-ever to address the very real upcoming financial difficulties of the social security system.
There are things to look at that would help. You could look at slowly moving retirement age. The original intent of social security was not to support people for 35 more years. Regan passed changes that were as draconian, and it made the thing more solvant for years. I will admit difficult to pass, actually damn impossible if they keep treating AARP and the like as enemies.
Oh, please. What, exactly, are you looking for?
The President, whose idea it is to deal with this, hasn’t introduced legislation.
The Democrats, who correctly believe that the non-Social Security budget deficits, Medicare, Medicaid, and a number of other things are more urgent, haven’t either.
The President hasn’t even produced a plan.
The Democrats have produced several; most notably the Diamond-Orszag plan. (Google it for the plan in PDF, plus analysis by the CBO and other groups.)
Seems like the Dems are less afraid of it than Chicken George (aka The Boy In The Bubble) is.
He’s dead. And he’s been out of politics for 16 years. Since then, we’ve had the wit and humor, and willingness to compromise, of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, and of course George W. Bush.