Arlen Specter (Democrat now, thank heavens) tried to say that the citizens questioning their politicians at townhalls across America, protesting Obamacare and refusing to let the townhalls become one huge Obamacare commercial, were " not necessarily representative of America."
Neil Cavuto asked Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele about Specter's comments and showed him a clip of Specter saying it, and Steele's reaction?
He bursts out laughing.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele burst out laughing Wednesday after watching a clip of Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) insisting that the town hall protesters are “not necessarily representative of America.”
Asked to respond to the clip during an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, Steele had to gather himself just to answer the question.
“I’m sorry, I’m laughing, I’m sorry,” Steele said as he tried to respond to Specter.
“Not representative of America? Well, then who are they representative of?” Steele asked. “This is part of the craziness that we’re hearing from the left on this issue. They’re trying to obfuscate the fact that the American people ticked off, as one of the participants said yesterday, and they’re very concerned.”
Steele makes a good point that has been confirmed by poll after poll in the last few weeks, the concern and annoyance from American citizens being shown at those townhalls, is representative of America.
The fact that those showing up, on their own, to these events and making their voices heard, refusing to allow the Obamacare infomercial so many of the politicians tried to make the event, is making a difference.
USA Today:
In a survey of 1,000 adults taken Tuesday, 34% say demonstrations at the hometown sessions have made them more sympathetic to the protesters' views; 21% say they are less sympathetic.
Independents by 2-to-1, 35%-16%, say they are more sympathetic to the protesters now.
The findings are unwelcome news for President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, who have scrambled to respond to the protests and in some cases even to be heard. From Pennsylvania to Texas, those who oppose plans to overhaul the health care system have asked aggressive questions and staged noisy demonstrations.
The forums have grabbed public attention: Seven in 10 respondents are following the news closely.
This follows up on the other recent polling numbers, showing that 41 percent of voters view the protests going on across the country at townhalls, with protesters making their feelings known loud and clear, favorably, while 35 percent do not and 23 percent are unsure, from Rasmussen.
Rasmussen, in another poll, also broke the questions down and asked aout "single payer" issue and found that 51% of the nation’s voters fear the federal government controlling their healthcare, more than private insurance companies.
And 53 percent of Americans oppose Obamacare, in and of itself, via yet another poll.
So yes, Arlen, these protesters ARE representative of America whether you like the newsflash or not.
The we move on to something else Steele said in that interview:
Steele then turned his fire on President Barack Obama and the White House, whom he accused of stacking a town hall audience in New Hampshire Tuesday with supporters.
“You’ve got the president, who has a town hall meeting, and we applaud him for that, and then [White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs comes out and talks about how peaceful and respectful it was,” Steele said. “Yes, it’s great when you stack the room. I mean, it’s not the hardest, it’s like you have this line that you have to get into to get in.”
As the RNC chairman was accusing the White House of stacking its audience, he also dismissed charges from some Democratic lawmakers that the GOP is guilty of the same.
“Anyone out there who says that the Republican Party or state parties or Republican activists are out there doing that are flat-out lying. They’re wrong,” he said. “We are not bussing in folks like the Democrats are with SEIU members. We’re not coordinating the messaging and trying to disrupt these processes.”
Stacking the audience... lets see, Memeorandum has some news about that little oblivious ploy on the part of Democrats.
Like Roxana Mayer, who went to Sheila Jackson's townhall type event and pretended to be a doctor and was busted as not being a doctor at all, after newspapers had already captioned her photo claiming she was, via Patterico's Pontifications, who did excellent followup work on Mayer.
What she was though? An Obama delegate, and she admitted it.
More about the "random" questions Obama accepted at another townhall meeting... it seems the questions were randomly chosen but only from "friendly" sources.
In other words, no real questions from critics, only softballs thrown from Obama supporters.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged that many audience members were friendly to Obama's message, but he said the president chose questions at random. He reiterated the administration's earlier announcement that anyone could sign up for the free tickets through the White House Web site and said winners were picked "randomly by computer."
Back to that USA/Gallup poll, 7 out of 10 Americans say they are following news events of protests taking place at town hall healthcare meetings, which is exactly what Obama was scared of before the August vacation Congress took and why he kept pushing them hard to get Obamacare passed before they left.
He knew Americans would pay attention and come down, with a majority opposed to Obamacare.
The Swamp reports that Pew Research finds that 61 percent of Americans say that the protests at the townhall meeting are "appropriate".
Pew's latest News Interest Index survey was conducted between Aug. 7 and 10, after some of the most volatile encounters that members of Congress faced at town hall sessions but before the town hall that President Barack Obama held in Portsmouth, N.H., this week Some of the congressional sessions were disrupted by vocal protesters - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called them "simply un-American'' - as opposed to Obama's, which was relatively calm, much to the pleasure of the White House, which considers some of the protests "side-shows.".
Nearly eight in 10 of those surveyed said they had heard a lot or a little about the sometimes volatile community meetings.
"Among those who had heard at least a little about the meetings,'' the Pew Center's Andrew Kohut reports tonight, "61 percent say they think the way people have been protesting is appropriate.'' And just 34 percent said they view the protests as inappropriate.
"Not surprisingly, there is a large partisan divide,'' notes Kohut, president of the Washington-based independent research center. While eight in 10 Republicans see the protests as appropriate, just 40 percent of the Democrats surveyed see them that way. Nearly two-thirds of all independents also agree.
That isn't all I found while looking through the news, oh noooooooo.
There is more.
The voices opposing Obamacare are being heard by people across America, they are paying attention, they are learning more about it and coming down on the side of protesters and they are making their own opinions known in polling from multiple organizations as you saw above.
The protests are continuing and the final question comes from a 2 page article at Politico, found at the bottom of page 1:
And perhaps most important, all sides are trying to figure out whether Democrats — even the ones who didn’t get screamed at during their town halls, many of which were peaceable — will have the political will to vote yes on bills in the House and Senate come fall.
If they do, they will be committing political suicide, effectively ending their careers because constituents that have their representatives completely ignore them, generally do not get elected again.
Indiana Congressman Baron Hill actually claimed that people protesting and questioning Obamacare at these townhall events were committing political terrorism, stating "If you just want to blow up a meeting that's a political terrorist."
Does this mean he thinks that the 61 percent of Americans saying these protests across the country are "appropriate" are actually condoning political terrorism, or he is just striking out at anyone that dares oppose Obamacare?
Constituents around the country are coming out to these townhall events, en masse and they are making their voices heard, and they should continue to do so, without violence, because America is listening and standing behind them.
Barack Obama would do well to start listening to Americans as well instead of listening to just his base of far left liberals, which according to all the recent polls, many of which linked in this very piece, are NOT representative of the majority in America.
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