For fear of being ‘ambushed’ by Republican “lynch-mobs,” Democratic Congressman Brian Baird (WA-3) said he refuses to hold in-person town hall meetings over the summer’s month-long Congressional recess.
Citing the G.O.P.’s “Brown Shirt tactics” as the impetus for his decision, Baird told the Columbian he will instead host a telephone town hall, thereby lessening the ability for “extremists”—which ostensibly is anyone expressing legitimate dissent—to “shout and make YouTube videos.”
Baird’s aggressive, albeit obtuse, rhetoric is the newest installment in the Republican and Democratic parties’ debate as to the nature of the protesters – organic reactions versus highly-orchestrated mobs of extremists.
While Baird’s patently offensive Nazi SA comparison is indeed more aggressive than the DNC’s portrayal of protesters as mentally unstable conspiracy theorists bent on proving Obama’s Kenyan birth, the sentiment is not wholly unlike the opinions expressed by Lanny Davis and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker Pelosi categorically rejected the notion that conservatives could oppose the President’s domestic agenda on legitimate grounds and maintained that critics of Obama’s health care overhaul were brandishing “swastikas and symbols like that” at town hall meetings.
Echoing Pelosi’s ridiculous opinion, Davis said in a posting on Politico’s Arena the Republican “shout-downs” were a classic example of “fascist tactics” and were a detriment to civil debate.
A greater detriment to civil debate, as it turns out, is the decision to not engage in one, like the case of Congressman Baird.
Community organizing is only acceptable as a singular means to effect liberal change. Critics of Obama’s “Great Society,” however, are pitch-fork toting, NASCAR loving, civil debate hating, Nazis.
In the absence of a public town hall, Baird’s pitch-fork toting, NASCAR loving, civil debate hating, Nazi constituents can reach the Congressman’s D.C. office by phone at (202) 225-3536.
