A number of contentious congressional townhall meetings in which people, identifying themselves as constituents, yell and protest against the Republican congressman or senator holding the gathering about Obamacare have been depicted in the media as spontaneous uprisings. The media has made the comparison to the early Tea Party, in which constituents yelled at Democratic members of Congress about Obamacare, but from the opposite perspective.
However, the Daily Caller reports that a local radio station in Louisiana has obtained a tape of a meeting held by a group that planned how to disrupt a townhall being held by Sen. Bill Cassidy in the community of Breaux Bridge.
What emerges is a sophisticated campaign to turn what would usually be a sedate townhall into a political circus. Groups of activists were instructed how to dress in order to infiltrate the meeting. They developed tactics of how to ask contentious questions and to prevent anyone else from posing friendlier questions. The idea would be to fill up the available seats early and quickly, shutting out legitimate constituents.
The inside team would be supported by an outside team, which would stage a demonstration outside the townhall venue for the television cameras. The inside team would boo and hiss and shout down the senator, disrupting the townhall, providing more of an impression of chaos and discontent.
The Recording offers a look into the sophisticated strategy behind the so-called resistance to President Donald Trump that would have made the late Saul Alinsky smile. It lacks the spontaneous, grass-roots quality of the Tea Party, a movement organized by ordinary people who often lacked experience in political activism. The current incidents are being orchestrated by individuals steeped in the vagarious of political street combat.
They intend to win at all costs.
Ironically, while Americans are split on President trump personally, not surprisingly for such a polarizing figure, they tend to support his policies. The political activists who are invading townhall meetings and their shadowy leaders are trying to create the opposite impression, with the enthusiastic support of the media. The goal is to frighten enough Republican office holders enough to make them go wobbly when it comes time to repeal and replace Obamacare.