Congressman Perlmutter Holds Health Care Town Hall Meeting in Brighton
by T.L. James | 9:41 pm, August 8, 2009 | Comments Off
Update: CompleteColorado was there, and has additional pictures of union members and a few stealthy shots of Congressman Perlmutter cowering in the alcove.
200-300 people attended Congressman Ed Perlmutter’s health care/Obamacare/socialized medicine-themed town hall meeting this afternoon at the King Sooper’s in Brighton.
Much more coverage below the fold…
The crowd seemed evenly divided between those supporting the government takeover of the healthcare industry and the expanded federal micromanaging of our individual lives, and those who opposed the Obama/Democrat plan while supporting a free-market, capitalist alternative. Given the intermingling of the two camps, it was impossible to determine whether one side outnumbered the other:
The early crowd was mostly pro-collectivization on the left, and pro-liberty on the right, with some intermingling.
By the time the event officially started, the two sides were fully mixed together.
The crowd closest to the store’s portico were nearly all in the pro-collectivization camp. I’d guess they had some advance guidance on where to stand, as they were the closest to the alcove where Ed Perlmutter would later ensconce himself, away from the crowd.
Perlmutter showed up on time, unlike Michael “Senator Who?” Bennet back on July 2, who kept his audience waiting for over an hour.
He immediately went into a roped-off area of the portico, announced he’d be there for two hours, and then retreated to the even more isolated alcove with a half-dozen (apparent) constituents and bodyguards. At which point he was taunted by the non-Democrats in the crowd for being a coward for hiding in the portico — and yes, it was blatantly obvious that that is what he was doing: isolating himself in a controllable space so as to avoid having to interact with the crowd directly. While the crowd was vocal (on both sides) for the first 45 minutes or so, there were no obvious altercations, nor was there anything that even remotely approached the “intimidation” or “mob scenes” or “riots” the media and Nancy Pelosi and the like have been wringing their hands over this past week. The only danger Perlmutter was in was the danger of having his delicate ears stung by the contemptuous shouts of certain of his constituents.
For all the talk on the left about the opposition to the collectivization of healthcare being an “astroturf” campaign orchestrated through and bought and paid for by greedy insurance corporations and the GOP, the evidence was overwhelmingly in favor of the opposite being the case: the left at this rally was clearly orchestrated and provided resources to support the effort. Perhaps three quarters of the signs held by the pro-collectivization people were mass-produced and professionally designed (with the distinctive Obama font and layout familiar from last year’s presidential campaign).
It appears that the left is finally getting its propaganda act together after being surprised by the reaction of the center-right. There was a consistent set of messages on the prefab signs and the handmade ones, on the one hand thanking Congressperson Fill-in-the Blank for their (presumed) support for Obamacare, and on the other announcing that the collectivists were “standing together” for healthcare “reform”.
Likewise, the newest big lie – that opposition to Obamacare is nothing but a demand to stick with the status quo and not an argument for something better – made an appearance as well. Watch for more of this one – it’s the latest fashion in lefty propaganda sloganeering!
Given all of the above, I got a good laugh out of this sign:
Oh, so you’re concerned about astroturfing, my vowel-challenged friend? How about this guy?
I’m sure these only appear to be prefabricated signs, what with that Obama typography and centrally-guided consistent messaging. And this man is most assuredly not a paid staffer for an astroturf organization funded by CODA or the erstwhile Obama campaign organization. Whatever would make one think such a thing? This is pure and honest grassrootery at its finest, right here…
…And of course, Obama’s biggest union supporters were in no way involved with the event. That’s just crazy talk coming from insurance-company funded right-winger anti-healthcare astroturfer shills!
Not only did the majority of the prefabricated signs have the Obama typography, some (including the handmades) carried the Obama logo and bits of His banal-but-catchy campaign slogan as well. Indeed, the Obama cult of personality was much in evidence at this event:
As was the obligatory indictment of capitalism…or, I should say, the left’s cartoonish boogeyman version of capitalism:
And then there was the similarly obligatory insinuation that hate is the real reason for opposition to Obamacare:
Yes, we all know that all opposition to the program of the left can be boiled down to some form of hatred…not hatred for the President (those accusations are coming up soon, no doubt), but in this instance some vague and undefined hatred of healthcare reform itself. Which is bizarre to us, but makes a strange kind of sense to those of an emotion-driven mindset — it matters little whether the purported object of the hatred makes any sense, when merely invoking the word “hate” is enough in itself to be taken seriously as making a damning and irrefutable indictment of the enemy.
This woman, on the other hand, lets slip what the “Progressive” left is really afraid of: the grassroots opposition symbolized by the “tea party movement” over the past seven months, and the growing opposition to Obamacare:
Just keep trying to sell that Big Lie, sweetie. The polls on Obamacare increasingly show otherwise.
The other recurring message (especially in conversations I heard around me) was that “healthcare is a right”. I interviewed this regrettably ill-informed young woman, and will post the video later:
Meanwhile, only the 3-4 “Hands Off My Healthcare” hand fans on the pro-liberty side were plainly prefabs (see the “Hope Over Fear” picture above) — the rest were plainly handmade, or simple word processor jobs:
In fact, the opponents to Obamacare were (in discussions with the collectivists in the crowd) offering up free market alternatives and defending capitalism as the better mechanism for increasing coverage, reducing costs, promoting innovation, and maintaining our liberty. Naturally, the collectivists were having none of it, the care-and-share mentality and antipathy towards capitalism at the root of their demand for healthcare socialization being amenable to neither elementary reasoning nor any consideration of the plan’s readily-foreseeable unintended consequences.
And finally, it wouldn’t be an Eddie Perlmutter event without his Republican challenger and omnipresent scold Brian T. Campbell making an appearance to work the crowd:
I’ll have some video up later, once I’ve had the chance to boil it down.
Tags: anti-capitalism > astroturfing > Capitalism > collectivization > Health Reform > Healthcare > Michael Bennet > Obama > obamacare > perlmutter > socialized medicine > town hall > union
