The tide is turning.
The Republicans and Insurance industry are nearly in a full scale rout. They know, as well as we do, that the public is going to get healthcare reform. Their goal has been downgraded from preventing it to perverting it.
You see this in the Town Halls as well.
You have citizens breaking down in tears in front of Republicans, only to have them robotically explain that they can't be helped. They are screwed. Someone do a bake sale, cause government can't help them.
But yes, we love Medicare, why do you ask?
Without their talking points, they have nothing. They know they are losing the battle of public opinion, Conservative shills in the media notwithstanding. Some are trying to pull a Bush and block dissenters. Others are desperately trying to slow the process down so the Insurance shills and Conservatives can regroup, create new talking points, sow fear, and do anything, anything to earn their big fat insurance company bribes for reelection campaigns.
But now, it's gone beyond the Freshman and Sophomore Republicans. Even McCain is feeling the pinch.
PHOENIX — Sen. John McCain met with an angry crowd at a town-hall meeting about health care reform Wednesday, sometimes having to fight to talk and telling one woman who wouldn't stop yelling that she had to leave.
The Arizona senator hadn't yet opened up the meeting at McCain's central Phoenix church to questions when one audience member continuously yelled over him.
What is good for the goose, after all, is not good for the gander. They set up this culture of rage over discourse. Even though McCain has been almost, almost a voice of reason in this mess, he still did not censure, he did not object, he did not condemn this nonsense when he could. He could have went on Fox News and said "No, stop, this is not helping." He did not, he reserved his objections to a 140 character tweet.
Twitter. That is his big demand for civility. He may as well have done his best Gene Wilder impression.
"Stop. Don't. Come back."
We have seen in recent weeks the Republican fake outrage play out. The money has dried up as the Insurance industry reevaluates plans and reappropriates money. It's no longer cost effective to bus in fake protesters to disrupt town halls. They are being ridiculed, they are being exposed, and they just aren't working.
Which means the pro reform groups, people who are actually in the (super)majority, now properly pissed off, are descending like a plague to the Republican town halls.
After McCain opened it up to questioning, one man angrily pointed at him and asked the senator why he deserves a better health care plan than him.
"I'm trying to get it for you," McCain told him. "We'll do it for you. We'll make it affordable and available to you."
Just deserts are so sweet. Especially when someone like McCain has to outright lie to his constituency in order to avoid a riot.
Or is McCain willing to go on record as supporting a public option? After all, that's the only realistic option for "affordable and available".
It's even more delicious if this has gone just as planned by Obama.
It's so sad, considering how gung-ho McCain was for Town Halls during the campaign. How the mighty have fallen.
When McCain was trying to answer questions from reporters after the town hall, one audience member yelled at him that he gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance companies every year.
In a voice of feigned surprise, McCain said "Really? I didn't know that."
Or perhaps not so mighty. Stay classy there, hero.
Update: Reclist? Dear lord, thank you! To clarify, I am not supporting pro-reform heckling. I am, however, insufferably pleased that this is blowing up in the Republicans' faces so much.
I am still searching for a video, but according to a few posts, the heckler was protesting Insurance companies bulk-denying/screwing over HIV patients.
Update the Second: LoCo Liberal has a video in his diary, here. My Blog-Fu has failed me, as I have no earthly idea how to embed that, sorry.