.A day after holding up a square of Astroturf to denounce the orchestrated attacks on Democratic town hall meetings on health care, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office said he would be talking with his Nevada constituents this month over the phone lines.
Reid’s office says that doing the meetings on the telephone will reach more Nevadans (snort!) and will also allow for “a more respectful environment that allows all sides to be heard” (double snort).
Really, Harry Reid is scared spitless to face his constituents face to face. How do I know this? Because he’s going to hand-pick the participants.
As is the typically process for tele-town halls, Nevadans will be dialed up on the day of the event and invited to participate.
This, by the way, is not the typical process for tele-town halls, at least not the ones I’ve come across. Here’s how those teleconferences, most of which have involved one or more members of Congress, have worked. A few days before the teleconference — usually three days or so but occasionally a week — I get an e-mail from the person organizing it. That e-mail asks me to check my schedule and reply if I can participate. It almost always asks me to let the organizer know if there’s someone else who might be interested in participating who might not have gotten the e-mail. In only a couple cases have I been invited to a teleconference that was happening the same days and those happened because of a last-minute scheduling problem. I have never been called to participate in a town hall on the same day it was scheduled and I’ve never heard of such a thing happening. I’m sure it’s possible, but the biggest reason I can imagine for doing it that way is to weed out people who might have obligations that day.
You know, people with jobs and families who can’t simply drop everything and take part in a tele-town hall with Harry Reid.
I bet you can imagine who might be able to show up at the drop of a hat, though, can’t you? Those are the folks Reid wants on his call, so he can say that there was no opposition to Obamacare in his state at all. He’s not interested in an exchange in ideas because he has no intention of changing his mind, no matter what argument you bring. That is why, contra my friend Rick Moran, it is essential that we who oppose Reid’s not-at-all creeping totalitarianism make it very clearly and loudly known that his continued employment depends on what he does with Obamacare.
If that means we get in his face to get his attention, then that’s what we have to do. If it means using accurate though impolitic phrases like “death panel”, then by all means use them. It should be clear to anyone at this point that Democrats like Harry Reid remain unwilling to listen to our arguments when we wrap them in white papers. Now it’s time to wrap them in screaming headlines, three inches tall.
Sometimes, as Dalton once told us, there is a time not to be nice. This is one of those times.
Gaius is willing to provide Dingy Harry an escape hatch, though.
Maybe it’s not just cowardice, of course. It could be that since it’s August and all, good old Harry just doesn’t want to smell the peons while he lectures them.
He does seem to hold the reeking masses in contempt. I suppose that the less actual contact with them he has, the happier he’ll be. I suggest that when he comes up for re-election in November, we remove the worry of stinky loud constituents entirely.
(via memeorandum)
Tags: Harry Reid, National Health Care
