DUVALL: What’s really behind the ‘grassroots’ health care angst

By Eric DuVall<br><a href="mailto:duvalle@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Eric</a>

If I could make one law it would be to ban astroturf — in its various forms.

For starters, outdoor sports should always be played on grass. And, expanding on the definition, a political group should only be allowed to call itself “grassroots” if it isn’t tied to a wealthy network of political insiders. In the political world, the groups that misrepresent their grass-roots status are known as astroturf — and just like the American League’s designated hitter rule, it’s ruining the purity of the game.

Lately, YouTube and cable news have helped to broadcast a “grassroots phenomenon” that’s taking place at town hall meetings across the country. Senators and congressmen are holding open meetings with constituents to talk about health care reform. At several of these meetings, groups of astroturfers are showing up to yell, scream, taunt and generally make a mockery of our democratic process — and any lawmaker, Democrat or Republican, who’s in favor of trying to strengthen it.

These people are coordinated and in some cases trained and funded by Washington insiders who return them to their communities to recruit and organize their “friends and neighbors.” Then they alert the media to their made-to-seem-spontaneous stunt. It’s the modern-day equivalent of the old torches-and-pitchforks routine.

So much for civil discourse.

I’ve got a few observations. The first is that, generally speaking, anyone who makes a scene at a congressional representative’s town hall meeting — for that matter, anyone who even goes to their congressman’s town hall meeting — doesn’t represent the American mainstream. Those in the American mainstream, whatever they make of health care reform, are too busy working to pay for the insurance that these nutjobs are all broken up about.

Don’t get me wrong: Reasonable people (myself included) have reasonable objections to some of the things being discussed. The difference is we read about them in newspapers rather than ambush congressional aides in parking lots.

Second, those who show up to these events quite frequently have no idea what they’re actually mad about. Almost to a person, they oppose government-run health insurance. Yet, as was demonstrated by a quick-thinking Democratic congressman from Texas last week, when asked, nearly half of his hecklers at a town hall were on Medicare!

So this begs a question: If they really aren’t opposed, at least in practice, to government-run health care, what’s got them so upset? For starters, it’s ignorance in the form of a coordinated misinformation campaign by those who generally oppose President Obama on everything and those who have a personal stake in opposing health care reform.

House Republican leaders have gone so far as to characterize Obama as a murderer of old people. Constructive dialogue, isn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong. I blame Democrats as much as Republicans for this whole mess. The reason this predictable misinformation campaign is gaining traction and overtaking the actual debate is because the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress have done an awful job at putting out their message. I can’t turn on a television without seeing Obama, and yet somehow I still don’t know what measures he actually wants in the reform bill.

On Capitol Hill, committee chairman are too busy trying to position themselves as power-brokers to let one panel in each house of Congress handle the issue. There are something like six committees all writing health care legislation right now and none of the bills are the same. Each committee wants to write the law that will change one-sixth of the nation’s economy and they all want to do it on their terms.

Rather than cover the morass in Congress in any kind of depth, most national news outlets are instead taking the easy way out and covering the sound byte-friendly shouting astroturfers. The whole thing is a mess.

Add to that, the other thing that’s got the angry white guy angry again — their intolerance of people who don’t think like them. I imagine the logic driving this angst goes something like this:

Government spending?

Nancy Pelosi?!

Health insurance for poor people!?!

Get the pitchforks!!!

The foot soldiers of the radical right can make their voices heard in many ways and right now their ever-percolating anxieties are being stoked by interests in Washington and the media echo chamber to shout down what might be our nation’s last chance to reform health care before it makes us go broke.

My only question: If they succeed, what will they have to yell about then?

Managing Editor Eric DuVall’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Contact him at 693-1000, ext. 112 or by e-mail to eric.duvall@tonawanda-news.com.