RUSH: Now, I have a question for Steny Hoyer and for Dick Durbin and any other Democrat. You people really think these town hall health care protests are being coordinated by the insurance companies and the drug companies, then I have an idea for you. Why didn’t you come back from recess and hold hearings into this? You can subpoena citizens. You can subpoena executives. You can subpoena lobbyists from these companies to come up. Some of these people have spoken up and some of these people have gotten beaten up. A black conservative got beat up in Mehlville, Missouri, outside St. Louis at a Russ Carnahan event — and none of this violence started happening until Obama dispatched his union thugs.
One thing we don’t need is any hearings to understand that Obama is dispatching his own community organizer thugs — AFL-CIO, SEIU people — to intimidate citizens at these town hall meetings. So if you think the insurance companies are behind all these citizen protests, then do the show trials. Do the hearings. Subpoena the witnesses. Put up or shut up. Hit back twice as hard against Americans like you’ve been told to by the White House. Now, let’s go through some recent developments here. First from TheHill.com. ‘House Democratic leaders have set up a healthcare ‘war room’ to help their rank-and-file members navigate a tumultuous August in which they find themselves on the defensive on their signature issue.’ Let me tell you what happened in Missouri. There’s a congressman there named Ike Skelton.
And he has canceled, he’s not going to have any town hall meetings which is probably going to be the modus operandi for most of the Democrats in the House and the Senate as they go back. But you know where I found out about this? I found out about this in a letter to the editor of a local Missouri paper! The journalists at the paper didn’t think it was a big enough story on its own that Skelton wasn’t going to have any town meetings. But they did publish a small, little letter to the editor from somebody who had called Skelton’s office to find out where there was going to be one. Skelton’s office said, ‘Uh, there’s not going to be any.’ So why do you need a war room? Why do you need a war room? Why do you have to have plans here to ‘help their rank-and-file members navigate a tumultuous August’ if you’re going to not have the meetings in the first place?
‘The effort is being run out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) office, but is being manned around the clock by a rotation of leadership and key committee staff members, according to leadership aides. Although the war room, or ‘healthcare hotline,’ is primarily designed to give members the ability to get immediate health policy answers and updates from leadership offices…’ Do you understand what this is? These guys still haven’t read it! Most of them still haven’t read it. When they’re out there, they are to call the war room for on-the-spot help, getting answers to questions that might be asked of them. ‘[T]op Democrats are also planning to use it to help their colleagues respond effectively to political and press attacks, if necessary.’ Press attacks?
What press attacks? Are they serious? Press attacks. Okay. So we got a war room set up in the House of Representatives. Now, there’s this: The White House has set a new website called Reality Check. ‘Dear Friend, Anyone that’s watched the news in the past few days knows that health insurance reform is a hot topic…’ By the way, have you noticed how in just the past couple weeks it’s become health ‘insurance’ reform? I’ll explain why in just a second. ‘[A]nd that rumors and scare tactics have only increased as more people engage with the issue. Given a lot of the outrageous claims floating around, it’s time to make sure everyone knows the facts about the security and stability you get with health insurance reform.
‘That’s why we’ve launched a new online resource — WhiteHouse.gov/RealityCheck — to help you separate fact from fiction and share the truth about health insurance reform. Here’s a few of the reality check videos you can find on the site,’ and then they put the link. They’ve even got a logo here. This one looks like a license plate. Health Insurance Reform Reality Check. ‘But don’t be misled. We know the status quo is unsustainable. If we do nothing, millions more Americans will be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions, or see their coverage suddenly dropped if they become seriously ill.’ This is the second website. The first website is a snitch website, and now they’ve got this Reality Check website — and there’s a third thing that’s going on and this is about congressional visits.
It’s astroturfing. It consists of two things: Obama sending out marching orders about having citizens visit congressmen. There are two parts to this. The first e-mail asks people to sign up to visit their congressman on another website and the second part of it is a flier you get when you sign up. It’s a PDF file, but you get a flier when you sign up which gives instructions on how to behave and what to say when you go visit your congressman. This is Obama attempting to enlist his own supporters, Democrat supporters, to go and calm these members of Congress, one-on-one and tell them how much they’re loved and how much they’re appreciated and how much health care reform is supported to counter the mobs and the Nazis that are showing up at the public town hall meetings. This website is ‘Organizing for America’ with the Obama logo and everything.
‘Dear friend… ‘All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan, and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now. So we’ve cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform. All this week, [Organizing for America] members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform.’ They don’t even bother to put ‘health’ in that sentence. ‘You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you. …
‘As you’ve probably seen in the news, special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it’s getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats.’ Has anybody seen a member of Congress physically assaulted? Has anybody seen a member of Congress ‘hung in effigy’? Now, how many times was George W. Bush hung in effigy? You want to talk about death threats? We got books and a movie on the assassination of George W. Bush, and where was the outrage? And these gutless wonders members of Congress are running around talking about death threats?
‘We can’t let extremists hijack this debate, or confuse Congress about where the people stand. Office Visits for Health Reform are our chance to show that the vast majority of American voters know that the cost of inaction is too high to bear,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The second part, if you do as instructed, and proceed to their website to schedule an office visit for health reform, after you sign up, then they send a little PDF file: Office Visits for Health Reform Guide. ‘Before your visit, call ahead, print out the attached flier and write out why this matters to you and take it with you to your office visit with your congressman.’ This is Organizing for America. This is a virtual Astroturf script for visiting your congressman, sent out to all the leftist supports of Obama. And then, you know, what to do during your visit.
For example: ‘Introduce yourself to your congressman. Office resources vary so you may be speaking to the office director, caseworker, or simply the person at the front desk. Make sure that whoever greets you knows that you’re a constituent, you’re there to express your support…’ They are having to send out multiple e-mails, war rooms, websites to instruct their brain-dead zombies on how to go out and show support for this abomination! It’s the Night of the Living Dead, in the daytime! Obama zombies marching around with little instructions and pamphlets and manuals to their congressional offices with instructions on how about the nice? And then after the visit, ‘Share the details of your visit. It’s really important for our campaign to hear how these conversations go and how the staff responded. Tell us how it went. Go to MyBarackObama.com office feedback.’
A fourth website! You got the Organizing for America website, you got the health care now whatever. And why is all this happening? Rasmussen Reports: ‘When it comes to health care decisions, 51% of the nation’s voters fear the federal government more than private insurance companies.’ Come on, American people! Get there faster, get there faster. ‘Fifty-one percent of the nation’s voters fear the federal government more than they fear private insurance companies,’ so now we know why Nancy and the gang are out there demonizing and villainizing the insurance companies. ‘The latest Rasmussen Reports national phone survey finds that 41% hold the opposite view and fear the insurance companies more.’ So wherever you look in this debate, Obama and the Democrats are on the negative side, and they’re having to lie and rally and intimidate people into supporting.
The people who oppose this are fully informed, up to speed, showing up on their own volition. They’re certainly not having to go to four websites to find out where to go, what to say when you get there, and what to tell people after you leave. And in the meantime, the White House and his staff put out this notion that it is us stirring up mobs — when formal marching orders are coming from three different White House websites, and the House Democrats have their own war room to help deal with it. (interruption) I don’t know. I don’t know that David Brooks knows any of this. I don’t care whether David Brooks knows any of this. He’s just the token conservative at the New York Times.