Toomey deserves a thank you

Americans just have this innate love for protesting. Fighting back, not rolling over, not getting trod upon, is a hallmark of our character. And when we feel that our voices are not being heard loudly enough, we engage in a variety of different forms of protest: Writing letters to the editor, engaging in boycotts, making phone calls, lying down in the middle of intersections, walking across bridges, setting ourselves on fire (not a preferred approach,) knitting sweet little pussy cat hats that can double as toilet roll covers, and standing outside of senator’s offices.

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., knows a little bit about all of those methods, with the sole possible exception of the constituent “en flambé.”

For the past few weeks, ever since the inauguration of Donald Trump, he has been visited (one might say “assailed”) by his Philadelphia-area constituents.

There is this quaint little group that calls itself “Tuesdays with Toomey,” made up primarily of women but also some men who are intent upon letting the senator know how angry they are that he beat Katie McGinty.

Well, they don’t actually put it that way. They are generally polite.

But the implication in their various demands of “being heard” is that if Katie had snatched the Senate seat from him, she would have had them over for tea and crumpets, or Tastykakes since she was so proud of her Philly roots, every blessed day.

But one of the main complaints of “Tuesdays with Toomey” is their assertion that the senator has refused to meet with them, has refused to take their phone calls, has filled his constituent services department with ghosts and has locked the doors to keep them from getting into the building.

That last part is not a rhetorical or figurative complaint.

They are adamant that Toomey has locked the doors, put gnarling dogs out front, dug a moat and filled it with piranhas.

Anyone who has been Toomey’s offices in center city Philadelphia knows how hard it is to dig a moat north of Market.

The people who resent the fact that Toomey actually beat sweet Katie have very short memories (and that makes sense since elephants are the ones that are supposed to have the good recall).

They have decided to flood the senator’s offices with phone messages, making sure other people cannot get through.

They have been rude to the staffers manning the phones, have made assertions that have been disproven (as in they haven’t gotten email responses from staffers when it is documented that they have) and have generally tried to keep Pat Toomey from doing his job.

They even said he locked his doors against him, when it was actually security at the building in which the office was located that made the call.

This is because those protestors were disruptive to the other law-abiding businesses in the building.

There has been a lot of disinformation put out about Pat Toomey since the election, and the one that has gotten the most traction is that he won’t meet with his constituents.

There is this mythology that he hasn’t held any town halls, when he has held many of them across the state.

The fact that he doesn’t have them often in the 215 area code is because he spends so much time here to begin with and is accessible to his constituents, despite what the Tuesdays with Toomey folk try and make you believe.

And when I looked to see how many town halls the Democratic senator has held over the past few years, I couldn’t find any.

But that’s neither here nor there.

A senator should not be judged by how many times he holds meet and greets with the voters.

It is measured by the work that he does, and the values that he holds. Pat Toomey has done a great deal of good work over the years, has been a bipartisan figure in congress and has kept the lines of communication open with the public.

If the protesters would stop jamming those lines with nonsense, they’d be able to thank him for it.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and Delaware County resident. Email her at cflowers1961@gmail.com.