I thought I was bummed out about the public option getting stripped out of the healthcare bill.
But that’s nothing compared to the glimpse offered over at this site into the correspondence being received by our legislators.
Holy crap.
Think Progress found this delightful right-wing press kit, issued from local conservative crank Robert MacGuffie:
We here in Fairfield County Connecticut conducted an action at Congressman Jim Himes’s [sic] Town Hall meeting in May 2009. We believe there are some best practices which emerged from the event and our experience, which could be useful to activists in just about any district where their Congressperson has supported the socialist agenda of the Democrat leadership in Washington. [...]
– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.” [...]
– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.” [...]
– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”
You can see the whole document, including some documentation of the madness from local news reports, as a PDF here.
Now, I’ve been keeping an eye on Bob’s efforts a little, ever since his PAC showed up on the FEC website, and it turns out he’s exactly the kind of furious-at-everything crank that you’d expect, from his neighbors’ shrubberies to Senator Dodd right on up to the world. But I don’t need to hassle him for that — what’s interesting is that he sees himself as something of a leader in the “Tea Party movement,” but his group was most agitated not about the national debt or taxes, but rather, about the (ahem) tremendous fraud of climate change. This summer, they’re after health reform town halls. And that’s the fascinating thing about the conservative movement: not just the disorganization, but the ability to summon a full-blown, entirely personal outrage over literally anything at the drop of a hat.
Anyway, the plan put together by MacGuffie seems entirely likely to work – if you wanted to prevent an elected official or candidate from getting any benefit from interacting with the public in a face-to-face setting, their tactics will do it. And that’s just what conservatives do: Connecticut’s genteel political style doesn’t change the equation.
Over at MLN, tparty (who’s written three articles since I’ve started this one) has been following the ramp-up in conservative fury, from GOP Chairman Chris Healy cheering the efforts to shut down the town hall meetings to on-camera calls from Tea Party activists for Dodd to commit suicide. This isn’t the first time Healy has gone out of the way to bridge the divide between the GOP proper and the extremist fringe: his discussion with the Connecticut Conservative Congress (kind of the embryonic stage of the conservative movement between the “dittohead” phase of the 90s and the “tea partier” phase of today – they’re the people who carried the torch on Clinton and Vince Foster for all those years before they could fabricate an issue from Obama’s birth certificate).
But it’s important politically for the cranks to get the sign of institutional support when they’re seeking credibility, just as it’s important for the Republicans for the most insane smears to circulate in the news without their clear fingerprints. Add in the potential for a truly disastrous display of extremism — Congressmen lynched in effigy, Mexican immigrants killed by Minutemen — and the appearance of a group like this does wind up looking like news.
I mention this because Ezra Klein brought up an excellent point earlier today, and I wanted an excuse to link it into this post:
I’ve been attending health-care panels and events on a pretty regular basis for four or five years now. [...] But one thing is perfectly predictable: The Q&A session will be dominated by single-payer activists asking about HR 676.
There’s not a mystery as to why this happens: Single-payer activists are very well organized, and they make a point to dispatch their people to these events and get their members to the microphone and ensure that their perspective is heard. But as the bills under consideration suggest, politicians have had no problem ignoring the single-payer grassroots. Max Baucus ruled out their participation on day one. The media hasn’t shown the slightest inclination to cover their presence at event after event after event.
That’s worth keeping in mind as people begin to focus on the anti-health-care tea parties. The political system does not have some sort of consistent reaction to grassroots pressure. Rather, it picks and chooses when it wants to listen to the views of the very, very non-representative groups of people who sit through at town halls and panel discussions.
I think the aura of insanity and outright dangerousness is actually a big part of why conservatives get through with these kinds of efforts, while millions of protestors in the street for Iraq and healthcare activists nationwide earnestly appearing at forums with statistics at the ready are so easily marginalized. Despite last year’s complaining and guilt-by-association campaigns, conservatives have learned a great deal from the Vietnam-era domestic terror groups like the Weathermen, and have mainstreamed tactics that progressives now find repugnant.
Of course, on the flip side, the organized left of this decade has adopted a “free market” approach to promoting causes, subsidizing preferred mass-media messages through OFA and DFA and PCCC and MoveOn with five- and ten-dollar contributions. So while this story about a local kook and the astroturf operation working off the same playbook has gotten the blogosphere jumping, it may be that the best response is to play to our strengths: since we’re not interested in matching the right for sheer offensiveness in the service of shutting down debate, supporting the groups like DFA and PCCC – and adapting their model to deliver focused, factual, and respectful messages to voters and representatives on the local level – might be the best way to come out of the summer Congressional recess with health reform stronger than when it started.
Ezra Klein did an interview with the on-the-mend Henry Waxman on the subject of his recently-released book, and he promises that it will include a more sweeping description of how the sausage factory runs than is normally featured in this kind of work:
I wrote the book with the help of Joshua Green, a superb writer. It sets out many anecdotes and behind-the-scenes information that people don’t ordinarily hear about in books about how Congress works. They usually hear about a House subcommittee then a committee then the Senate then the Senate committee. They think about it in terms of little boxes. I try to portray the forces at play in dealing with legislation and how some things that were big battles at the time are now taken for granted.
It was a big battle to get food producers to put uniform labels advising people about calories and sodium and carbohydrates and other nutrients on food. But I think most people take it for granted that they can see those labels when they go into the store and use them to make their decisions. But the food producers said they were going to go bankrupt if they had to put these labels on, it would be such a burden, it would be excessive. Finally we got it passed. And I don’t think most people give it a second thought today. It’s just there. [...]
I also talk about the Clean Air Act, which is the most successful environmental law on the books today. There was a huge fight over a one–year period to get that legislation enacted. But now people in the Northeastern parts of the United States that were seeing acid rain don’t have that problem any more. And the cost turned out to be a tenth what they said it would be even though different industries argued that our economy would go to hell. Invariably they met their requirements, met them ahead of time, and met them at a fraction of the predicted costs. So we’ve had very successful laws. But very few people talk about government in those terms.
Funny, Connecticut’s Governor just vetoed a calorie-labeling bill for restaurants, using those very same scare tactics:
“Does it come as a surprise to anyone that a vegetable salad is healthier and more nutritious than a bacon cheeseburger?” the Governor said. “There has been a growing and troubling tendency by some to legislate nearly every aspect of our lives and society, including personal responsibility. Such legislation always comes at a cost to the taxpayer and to individual freedom.”
Governor Rell also noted the cost such a bill would impose on restaurateurs and on the Department of Public Health, adding, “This is hardly the economic climate in which to further burden our businesses and state agencies.”
I included that bit about the Clean Air Act from Waxman’s answer because it occurs to me that there’s a vast amount of what could charitably be described as lying going on in the organized opposition to progressive legislation, and somehow history manages to forget the names of those that tell tales of grossy inflated costs to industry and the supposedly market-destroying impact of pro-consumer and pro-health regulations. If the laws get passed, then advocates are putting their resources into the next fight; if the laws fail, then the lying goes unproven. But from watching the damage that can accrue to politicians that repeat these kinds of falsehoods, it seems like revisiting the claims of industry groups would have a strong public policy benefit, a potential that advocates haven’t yet tapped.
An interesting discussion on minor parties influencing major parties from potential Senate candidate Peter Schiff, speaking at the Libertarian Party of Connecticut convention:
What is going on in the Republican Party is there’s a group of people who say that the Republicans need to move to the left, and be more like Democrats. Well I don’t even know how they could move any further, I can’t distinguish them myself already! (Laughter, applause) And I know that that strategy can’t win. Because theoretically if there’s two Democrats in the race, then you may as well pick the real one.
And the other group says we need to move more to the conservatives, to the right, but again, what does that mean? What is the right of the Republican Party anymore? They can’t win an election. What we need is a move towards the Libertarian wing, to the Ron Paul wing, because that’s the only way we can win.
The only way we can get Libertarian principles into government is to bring ‘em in through that party. I don’t think we have enough time to try to get the Libertarian party in office, we just need to get Libertarian-minded people in office. And I think the way to do that now is through the Republican party, because I think the Republican Party is very vulnerable right now. Instead of fighting them, just take them over, and infiltrate the party, and then influence the direction that it moves. [...]
As Libertarians, it’s never going to happen, you’re not going to win anything, but in the Republican Party you have a shot. And the best way to run is to criticise it, and if you’re running in the party and you’re criticizing the party, you’re likely to get a lot of support from the independents. You might even get some Democrats that were stuck in the Democratic Party because they were so divided on the social issues. [...]
Q: The Republican Party is poisoned, it’s nothing more than the opposite side of the coin in the Hegelian dialectic from the Democratic Party, they are the two parties who own power. The money powers behind the Republicans aren’t going to line up behind Libertarian candidates, I don’t think, because they like the control that they have. How do we break that stranglehold?
Schiff: The only way to defeat them is to do it from within. We’ve already shown, after 40 years, that we’re not making any headway, trying to break into it. The media is not going to take a Libertarian candidate seriously anyway, they never have, and they won’t. If you’re running as a Republican, then they’re going to take you seriously. [...]
Because look, I mean when Ron Paul ran as a Libertarian, and he ran for President as a Libertarian, I know, I voted for him, right?
Nobody knew him, he didn’t get any media, he didn’t get anything. He ran as a Republican, and everybody knows who he is now! And he actually got votes! He didn’t win, but you know what, he was in the race ’til the end. Look at all the other ones that dropped out. Look at Mayor Giuliani, a lot of these guys dropped out really quickly, but he had support to the end.
The video for this quote comes from around 1:25 (that’s 85 minutes in, not 85 seconds) through to about 1:40, and it actually reminds me of how us Dean folks used to talk about the Democrats back in 2003 and 2004. And Schiff sounds like he’s pretty pumped about Ron Paul’s example of staying in the race through the end.
The questioner in the video didn’t really take well to the suggestion that he abandon the minor party strategy that Libertarians have stuck to for so long, and I might suggest to him that he consider using the fusion laws to gain some leverage over the process and change the electoral calculus for those who will be voting in the 2010 primary. (And, since I suspect there will be some search engine visitors to this post, I should mention that this strategy is already being used on the progressive side to good effect by Working Families — and that I’m someone who’s eager to see a Republican party with some level of principles, even if I elect to spend my time improving the Democrats instead).
In any case, this is being billed as Schiff’s first political speech, and it’s always interesting to see where a politician starts so you can see how he or she grows over time. And Schiff, to his credit, seems to be the one Republican starting out with something to say apart from how lousy Chris Dodd is – he hardly mentions Dodd at all in the speech.
Also, from the end of the Q&A period:
Personally, the change coming from the third parties, it’s just so difficult given the way we’re operating. So I think we’re going to have to change one of those two parties. And I think it’s more likely we’ll change the Republican Party because they’re the ones that aren’t in power, the Democrats are. And it’s going to be difficult to change the party in power, it’s easier to change the party that’s out of power.
I tend to think this isn’t the case: looking back, Al Gore was more progressive than Clinton, and was followed by two candidates that were more conservative than he was. It’s hard to negotiate from a position of weakness or desperation.
The Fairfield County Weekly follows up on this MLN post on the votes by our Congressional delegation for war funding, getting quotes from Murphy:
On Afghanistan, Murphy says he voted for the bill because “It supports President Obama’s troop withdrawal plan and his counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan.
“Though my support for President Obama’s plan in Afghanistan comes with a short leash — if Afghanistan and Pakistan become more destabilized, we will need to reconsider the costs of our involvement,” Murphy says in a statement.
Murphy returned from a recent trip to Afghanistan where he was told about dramatic upticks in suicide bombings, something previously unheard of in the war-torn nation. Murphy also returned convinced the American military must stay involved.
“I believe we need to refocus our efforts in Afghanistan to stifle the drug trade, work with tribal leaders to suppress the insurgency and help bolster the country’s flagging economy,” Murphy writes on his congressional Web site.
Joe Courtney (by way of spokesman Brian Farber):
Courtney spokesman Brian Farber says the bill was about more than money: it compensates troops caught in the Bush administration’s stop-loss policy, essentially a back-door draft that kept troops stuck in years-long deployments, and requires Obama to report to Congress on military progress in Afghanistan.
“The [Obama] administration’s approach to Afghanistan is different, including working closely with local communities, tribal leaders, and providing the Afghanistan government the tools they need to defend their borders from Taliban and al-Qaeda,” Farber says.
… and the Greater New Haven Peace Council, following up on a meeting with Rosa DeLauro:
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the New Haven Democrat and powerful right hand to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, met with the Greater New Haven Peace Council for more than an hour this spring on the topic of Afghanistan. Peace council member Henry Lowendorf says DeLauro heard the group out but was not persuaded.
“She is sincere,” Lowerndorf says. “She really believes. She wants to support Obama. I just see Obama digging us deeper.” [...]
“This is not change,” Lowendorf says. “This is more of the same.”
I wonder: do Murphy, Courtney, and Obama have any sense that the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan played any role in the Democratic takeover of the House, Senate, and White House over the last couple of years? Come on, guys — time to shut these wars down.
It’s a new legislative session, which means it’s time for the Senate Vacancy Law to come roaring back into style. Last year, legislative leaders downplayed expectations of the bill’s passage, but this year it’s looking much more favorable.
You can contact your State Reps and State Senators on the bill — currently known as H.B. 5829 and introduced by Rep. Tim O’Brien.
You can also contact the House and Senate leadership (House Speaker Donovan, Majority Leader Merrill, and Senate President Williams), as well as Government Administration and Elections chairs Gayle Slossberg and James Spallone.
Or, you can get your Town Committee to endorse this well-made resolution drafted up by the Hampton DTC, available below the fold.