Despite a fast and bold start out of the gate, it looks like
whatever health-care reform plan President Obama passes will be a far
cry from his original idea: publicly funded health care for all who
want it. Obama’s obsession with bipartisanship, the political pressure
of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and in no small part,
the borderline violent dissent at public forums has turned “change we
can believe in” into “I can’t believe you’re changing.”
Unlike bottom-up organizations like MoveOn.org that take no corporate donations,
most of the organizations behind the right-wing “grassroots” movement
to derail reform are directly or indirectly related to the guys poised
to lose big bucks if Obama’s plan passes. Take, for example,
FreedomWorks, headed by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick
Armey of Texas. Until August 14, Armey was senior policy advisor for
the lobbying firm DLA Piper, which, according to opensecrets.org, has received $830,000
this year from big-pharma corporation the Medicines Co. In 2008, it
received $1.5 million.
Like many of his colleagues in the public-opinion trenches, Armey is
a master of “throw the stone, hide the hand.” Confronted by Rachel
Maddow on Meet the Press about a video produced by a tea-party
organization affiliated with FreedomWorks, in which townhall-meeting
violence is praised and encouraged, Armey laughed it off as a case of
blaming FreedomWorks for others’ misdeeds.
“[The Tea Party movement] is an enormously impressive uprising
across the country, loosely affiliated people,” he said. “These things
happen … [and] people get blamed for what other people do.”
“Other people” like Heather Blish, from Green Bay, Wisconsin. At an
August 6 townhall meeting, Blish introduced herself as just “a mom from
a few blocks away … not affiliated with any party.” But NBC’s local
Channel 26 station exposed her as the vice chair of the Republican
Party in Kewaunee County from 2006-2008.
Grassfire is another nonprofit that supposedly grew out of “popular
rage.” But according to SourceWatch and Public Citizen, Grassfire is
represented by the PR firm Shirley & Bannister. Craig Shirley was
the man behind the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad and the Stolen
Honor movie that helped destroy John Kerry’s presidential hopes.
The firm, whose clients include Ann Coulter and the National Rifle
Association, among others, denies the accusation.
Even Randall Terry, founder of infamous anti-abortion league
Operation Rescue, is back in the so-called “freedom fight” with a new
organization: Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex, from which he sends
e-mails to followers encouraging them to “Stir up some dust! Be
‘unreasonable’!” and “be ‘a little noisier than what you might normally
be.'” At a press conference in July, Terry warned of “random acts of
violence” if the Obama health-care plan passed, and violent “reprisals
against those deemed guilty.”
“Yes, yes, yes, absolutely,” says Terry in a phone interview. “If
the government of the United States forces people to pay for the murder
of babies, there will be some people who will react. It’s
inevitable.”
Never mind that the Obama health-care plan doesn’t force anybody to
perform or offer abortions.
Not all of the Christian right is on board with the effort to hijack
the health-care debate. Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer (both
credited by many scholars as ideological founders of the Christian
right), is a vocal opponent of the recent townhall disruptions. He left
the Republican party in 2000 and is now an independent who voted for
Obama.
“The Glenn Becks of this world are literally responsible for
unleashing what I regard as an anti-democratic, anti-American movement
in this country that is trying to shut down legitimate debate and
replace it with straight-out intimidation,” said Schaeffer on
MSNBC.
“These people are hatemongers and they’re distributing their
information on two levels: one, the lies about the health-care system,
‘euthanasia’ and all this nonsense, and on another level, leaving a
loaded gun on the table, calling our president Hitler. They’re shutting
down these meetings and making debate impossible.”
In their superb 2000 book, Right Wing Populism in America: Too
Close for Comfort, Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyon make a case that
these reactionary movements are nothing new, but the present link in a
long history of organized mobs determined to shut down the opposing
side.
“We have to distinguish between the people who are genuinely very
angry because they’re misinformed, and the people who are there trained
to just disrupt,” says Berlet. “Anger in a democratic society is
commonplace and acceptable. Disruption is not.”
What about guns at rallies? The loaded gun Schaeffer was talking
about is no longer at the table, but right outside of Obama’s town hall
meetings.
“If a whole bunch of black people or undocumented aliens showed up
with guns at a meeting of white elected officials, there would be a
very different response,” says Berlet.
“I’ve been an angry protester at meetings, but I haven’t tried to
shout people down,” he adds. “I’ve protested outside, but I’ve never
carried a gun. It’s OK for people to be angry and ask questions, but
not anger that is rage, that’s bitter and nasty and vicious. Democrats
and Republicans shouldn’t make up information, but right now we see the
Republicans and insurance companies making up information, and that’s
not acceptable. There is a difference between a legitimate angry
question that expects an answer and staged confrontations with people
so full of rage that they stop listening. That’s not what democracy is
about.”
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2009.