The crowds of town hall protesters shouting down congressmen and expressing fury at their government has dominated the media cycle this month. MSNBC even interrupted its hard hitting investigative coverage of Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon to discuss the grass roots phenomenon. Both political parties have tried to play the protests to their own advantage. Democrats ran an ad casting the crowds as right-wing mobs hell-bent on destroying Obama’s presidency while Republicans have been crowing about a rebirth of grass roots energy for their party. Many in the GOP have even started contemplating the uncontemplatable: victory in 2010.
Both sides are wrong. While polls have shown that Democrats are rapidly losing support and Obama’s approval rating is mired in the low-50s, congressional Republicans aren’t gaining any ground either. Last week’s Gallup poll found that independents are particularly sympathetic to the town hall outrage, by no less than a 2-to-1 margin. This led one blogger to speculate that the grass roots uproar is an indie phenomenon, similar to Ross Perot’s groundswell of support during the 1990s.
But there’s a better comparison. When Chris Matthews interviewed William Kostric, a protester who brought a holstered gun to Obama’s staged town hall meeting in New Hampshire, he asked who Kostric voted for in 2008. Matthews was undoubtedly expecting Kostric to say McCain so he could run through the litany of big-government promises Republicans made during their campaign and make his guest out to be an uninformed hypocrite. But Kostric threw Matthews a curve ball: he said Ron Paul.
Paul, the soft-spoken libertarian Republican from Texas who sent shockwaves through both political parties when he railed against the Iraq war at a GOP primary debate, is the granddaddy of this rebirth of anti-government outrage. The notion that the Republican Party will cash a political check from these protests is absurd. For eight years under George W. Bush, there was scant talk of rolling back the welfare state or empowering the individual or basic constitutionalism. Out of Bush’s numerous gaffes, the most telling may have been when he said, “We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” Bush was a wartime president who bloated the government in nearly every area at a record pace. By 2008, beachheads of authentic libertarian thought like Reason magazine and the Cato Institute were often reserving their harshest criticisms for Republicans, not Democrats.
Paul, the Republican canary in the coal mine, is the real catalyst for the town hall anger. The similarities between the “Paulnuts” of 2008 and the anti-ObamaCare agitators are numerous — the grass roots electricity, the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and Revolutionary War rhetoric, the broad disdain for government. It’s a hilarious and tart irony: the same Republican conservative establishment that flayed Paul’s supporters for their unorthodox ideas may be spared an ObamaCare public option by the Paulnuts’ visible anger.
As with Paul’s campaign, there’s a strand of crazy that runs through the recent organizing, expressed by dark intoning about conspiracy theories. Some of Paul’s most ardent supporters questioned the government’s explanation of 9/11 and some of the town hall protesters demand to see Obama’s birth certificate. The town hallers’ most energetic popularizer, Glenn Beck, seems to ricochet back and forth between poignant discussions of libertarian issues and weepy outbursts decrying Nazis, eugenics, and death camps. A small handful of the protesters have expressed their outrage in incredibly inappropriate ways, such as sporting a sidearm at an appearance by the president of the United States or hoisting a sign with Hitler’s mustache inked on Obama’s visage.
But today’s grass roots have also adopted the best of Paul’s ill-fated 2008 campaign — an unwavering dedication to strict constitutionalism and limited government that seems to have been abandoned by both parties. One of my favorite Youtube moments was caught on tape at a town hall with Senator Claire McCaskill when a soldier stood up and demanded an apology from McCaskill for supporting universal health care, explaining that the bill was far outside the powers entrusted to her in Article I of the Constitution. When was the last time you heard anyone read a representative his or her constitutional duties? Not at any Republican rally I can remember.
This is an entirely nonpartisan phenomenon – the most significant since Perot’s candidacy in 1992. After decades of government creep, abuse, and largesse by both political parties, a substantial segment of America seems to have collectively sighed, thrown their hands in the air, and screamed, ”Enough!” “Those weasels in Washington” — as Glenn Beck refers to both Republicans and Democrats — should take notice. Republicans may benefit from these protests in 2010; they may even learn from them. But they cannot and should not claim credit for them.
I agree with some of what you say about this grassroot phenomenon, but still I’m not quite sure you get it. I speak particularly about your language about the protestors showing up with a gun on their side. Let me clarify it. It was a statement – it is YOUR constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Guns are NOT bad. Bad people are bad. Just because someone has a gun in the open, does not automatically make it inappropriate or criminal. Also, it would be FAR more inappropriate if they had sported CONCEALED weapons, which insinuates malice intent. Crooks conceal their guns. Patriots who don’t want to have to use them are happy to show you them. You see, we patriots believe in using the first amendment so we don’t have to use the second. This was a first amendment STATEMENT of practicing the second amendment.
It seems to me that you are one of the many who have been programmed to believe that only police should be armed. Do you freak out when a cop straps an armed weapon to his hip and walks among a crowd? Then why do you when a concerned citizen does? Does he have any less right to protect his country than a “cop” does, especially if they both swear the same oath to the constitution?
I adamantly disagree with you that it was inappropriate. It was heroic. It reminded us that We the People are still in charge. We don’t answer to the government. They answer to us! We are their bosses. McCaskill and EVERY other elected offcial needs to read the constitution and understand it, or resign immediately! Also, Chris Matthews is a douche and an opportunist. He is not a journalist and makes the handful of actual journalists that remain in media, look like fools.