We'll know if the accusation of astroturfing was true when we see the 2010 results. If the folks are real at these meetings, the ones that are being barred from being heard, there will be problems in the coming months.
Please. These teabaggers at these town halls number a few dozen or a few hundred middle aged, cranky, under educated white people. There's nothing that looks like "america" in them, in america's broadest sense. I don't see any brown, black, young, or asian. I don't even think I saw anyone under the age of 55.
There's nothing remotely grass roots about it, that I can see. A few dozen, old, angry white people is not a grass roots movement. Bill Maher says it perfectly:
Bill Maher says we live in a stupid country; wingnuts flip out
And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.
I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.
Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.
Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen,
ANNIE: Truth is, the 'right' has never been good at turning out crowds, certainly not to protest. Mistakenly they've held onto some idea that if they hold true to values, that it will work out. Now, I'm not referring to the Republican Party, so don't go that way. Talking about those that are truly for a federal government that is relegated to the issues that cannot be done by more local government or the individual. People who believe that the government should get out of the way, it's the problem not the solution.
For a long time, from both parties these folks are losing. So why suddenly have they started to join together to be heard? Bush. Obama.
I have never gotten this recent dissertation that there is this vast legion of "principled conservatives" who "never supported Bush".
It really sounds to me like embarrased republicans who, belatedly, don't want to be associated with Bush/Cheney/Palin.
Bush spent most of his two terms, with overwhelming, and at times nearly universal support, from self-identified "conservatives" in every national poll taken.
To this day, numerous conservatives vainly try to defend their secret hero Bush, on message board forums.
Look, there is no groundswell of legions of americans who want to privitize social security, eliminate medicare, and trust corporations to protect the environment.
Annie: People who believe that the government should get out of the way, it's the problem not the solution.
This was actually the funniest, and most ironic thing you said.
After we just got fucked by wall street, after Enron raped california to the tune of 20 billion dollars, and after Halliburtion milked the taxpayer out of billions of dollars, while electrocuting american soldiers, I am actually astonished that rightwingers would even bother trotting out this shop-worn slogan
