That's a handy little video roundup of some of the highlights in
this week in Republican town meetings, highlights being a lot of people very pissed off over tax cuts for the rich and the potential obliteration of Medicare and Medicaid.
The video is a suggestion that for the first time in a while, Ryan’s plan has united Democrats by giving them a big fat target to go on offense against. Harry Reid announced today that the Senate will now hold a vote on the Ryan proposal — an effort to put vulnerable GOP incumbents on the spot, since a Yes vote will be used against them in the same manner that support for the Ryan plan is being used against multiple House Republicans....
Dems are working extremely hard to fix the national narrative around the idea that Ryan’s proposal has left Republicans scrambling, vulnerable, and on the defensive. They are trying to turn the blowback against it into a national story on a par with the Tea Party town halls of 2009, as captured in the above video.
They can add a few more to the video. Like this one.
That's
Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.), who is planning on running for the Senate seat Kent Conrad is vacating.
“I would like to know: Did you vote to eliminate Medicare as it is today?” a man asks Berg during his library appearance in an exchange caught on video by PlainsDaily.com (scroll down to watch).
“No,” Berg says, before the audience contradicts him.
“You voted for every Republican issue and that was part of the issues that went out there,” the man says.
A woman interrupts to ask how much the elderly will be asked to pay out of pocket for health care costs under the new system.
“I want you to tell me how much it’s going to cost us when we’re 65 years old after you give us a voucher,” she says.
“Fifty-five or over, absolutely no change, absolutely no change, in this Medicare program,” Berg promises.
“As long as you are over 55,” the woman responds. “If you’re 54, to hell with those people.”
All of which has led some Republicans to resort to things like this.
Last night, ThinkProgress was in attendance for a Fort Lauderdale town hall where Rep. Allen West (R-FL) took a different approach: pre-screening all questions. Not only were all questions pre-approved by the congressman’s staff, but the attendees were not even permitted to ask the screened questions themselves; staff members read the questions instead, lest a constituent ask an unscripted question. The Sun Sentinel noted that West’s move to pre-screen questions was a far cry from “his usual practice at previous town hall meetings, where West took questions from people who lined up at microphones.”
Which is also pretty damned funny, since West declared to protesters, “You’re not going to intimidate me." I think that horse left the barn with the whole not-taking-live-questions thing.
Don't forget that you, too, can attend a town meeting and put your own Republican member of Congress on the record about his or her vote on the Ryan budget. Use this handy tool to find a town meeting in your area.