This week Obama led a Town Hall meeting to discuss healthcare reform. The forum was open to those in favor and those opposed. Here’s the story as printed in The Seattle Times.
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Fans and foes of President Obama’s push to overhaul health care descended on a high school here on Tuesday to challenge him and hear him fight back against the criticisms — some outlandish — that have slowed the legislation’s progress.
“Parasites!” yelled the protesters on the right side of the school driveway.
“Ignorants!” yelled the protesters on the left side.
While apparently failing to convert the people outside who protested from the right side of the driveway, Obama sought to reassure the people gathered inside the school gymnasium that health-care reform does not mean that Americans will lose coverage or surrender treatment decisions to the government.
“Where we do disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that has actually been proposed,” Obama told the meeting of about 1,800 people.
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Unlike many of Obama’s town-hall-style meetings, usually filled to the rafters with supporters, Tuesday’s meeting included skeptics from whom he sought out questions. At one point he asked that only people who disagreed with his approach raise their hand to be called on.
You know who he was talking about, the Queen of the Lunatic Fringe, Ms. Sarah ”Stop Making Things Up” Palin. (See below for more on that.)
What struck me about that opening of that article was that ”fans and foes” were both welcome.
Remember four years ago when Bush was appearing at Town Hall meetings to push for Social Security reform? Foes weren’t allowed in to the meetings. People who disagreed were screened out, and if any managed to sneak in, they were kicked out. Here’s an excerpt from a March 2005 Washington Post story:
Three Denver residents yesterday charged that they were forcibly removed from one of President Bush’s town meetings on Social Security because they displayed a bumper sticker on their car condemning the administration’s Middle East policies.
The three, all self-described progressives who oppose Bush’s Social Security plan, said an unidentified official at an event in Denver last week forced them to leave before the president started to speak, even though they had done nothing disruptive, said their attorney, Dan Recht.
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This is not the first time people have complained about heavy-handed monitoring of who can attend — and speak at — Bush’s events promoting his Social Security plan. A newspaper in Fargo, N.D., reported that when Bush came to the city on Feb. 3, more than 40 residents were barred from attending the event.
The president has held Social Security rallies in more than a dozen states this year. The crowds are closely monitored for possible disruptions, and protesters are quickly escorted away.
Protesters often stand out because the crowds are packed with Bush supporters, who have been invited by a local GOP House member or organization. Those onstage at most of the town hall meetings are carefully screened people from the area who agree with the president’s Social Security proposal. The participants typically rehearse what they will say with members of the president’s advance team and rarely, if ever, say anything critical about his plan for private accounts.
Yes, I remember… Bush was banking on some political capital that he said he won in the 2004 election to push through his plan to destroy Social Security, but he wasn’t going to waste any of his capital on people who disagreed with him. Best to keep them away. They might have asked him an intelligent question that he wasn’t prepared to answer. Wouldn’t want to look stupid or anything…