Watching Dogget and Specter have their town hall meetings invaded and completely disrupted by the health industry thugs, my first question is how should I respond? Anyone who doesn't think these people are planted by either Repugs or healthcare industry lobbyist, doesn't get out in the political arena very often. These things are clearly staged, not spontaneous outburst from a concerned public. I think the media will ID the agents fairly quickly. But they can be very disruptive. So what to do when confronted by them?
Yelling back just serves their purposes and adds to the anarchy of the situation. Fighting could be a deterent, but it could also be an assault charge against you. Leaving would again just serve their purpose. Just ignore the town hall meetings all together? Form a counter group to shout them down? So what then?
I do recognize that the large majority of the voting public has never seen a town hall meeting and never will. But the media coverage of this type of event certainly gets attention. From the videos it makes it seem that they are all against healtcare reform. Is this artificial grassroots effort to control the message going to be at all effective, or simply fail as miserably as the teabagging experiment?
I am inclined to believe that this is going to fail, but it is also one of those ridiculous stunts that just might work. In large part it will depend on how well the media exposes the reality of the protests, specifially their origins. I am concerned that they won't. Ideally, they would lump these together with the teabaggers and birthers, to show the desperation of the Repugs in attempting to create the impression of grassroots support where there is none. Again, I don't think they will? Actually, my biggest concern is that their level of desperation to just win one battle with the Dems has risen to a point where they are intentionally inciting violence to turn the tide.