Phony ‘town halls’ backfire
In April of 2011, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Janesville returned to his southern Wisconsin district to begin a slate of 19 town hall meetings with constituents. At the time, his staff estimated he had conducted over 500 such meetings since taking office 12 years before.
But these town hall meetings were different from Ryan’s previous ones. The heat of the protests over Gov. Scott Walker’s public sector union reforms had poured over into Ryan’s meetings, and demonstrators were now standing up and disrupting his presentation. Video ricocheted around the Internet of Ryan being “booed” during his talks; at some stops, protesters had to be removed.
When I talked to Ryan at the time, he shrugged off the demonstrations, guessing that some people just wanted to say they were “arrested by their congressman.” He noted the organized way in which the disruptions took place: one person would stand and start yelling, and when security descended on that protester, another would pop up and begin disrupting. This pattern kept security from being able to attend to each protester individually.
The protests were so successful, Ryan would eventually win three more races and ascend to the House speakership.
In 2017, Democrats are once again conducting a theatrical drama only they and the media want to see. This time, however, the participation of their Republican elected official isn’t even necessary. They simply call their own “town hall” meeting, put an empty chair in front of the crowd and wail that Republican Politician X “refused” to face them.
On Sunday night, a group that calls itself “Forward Kenosha” held just such a “town hall” meeting for the sole purpose of embarrassing Ryan. The meeting, not surprisingly held at a Kenosha union hall, was announced on Feb. 19th — a week before the event took place. Given that town halls typically are scheduled months ahead of time, it was never a serious attempt to connect with Ryan; it was simply a melodrama in which constituents wearing vulgarly-named pink hats yearned to play the lead role. (Madisonians pulled the same trick with Sen. Ron Johnson a few days earlier.)
Nonetheless, these stunts allow the theatrically aggrieved to con the media into thinking there’s some sort of uprising against Republicans when these are basically run-of-the-mill Democratic Party meetings with a microphone and an empty chair added as secret sauce to make them newsworthy. Of course, in 2009, when angry constituents flooded town halls to complain about the Affordable Care Act, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi derided them as “astroturf” or “un-American” citizens who were “carrying swastikas.” (And let’s not forget the left’s outrage over Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair” gimmick at the 2012 Republican National Convention.)
Someday, progressives will learn that vapid histrionics merely galvanize opposition against them. Their inordinate outrage over Walker’s Act 10 likely cost them a legitimate chance of recalling the governor from office. Their marching and chanting turns off large swaths of working class voters that see unrest as a threat, not progress. Even voters who don’t particularly like Donald Trump seem to think the Democratic Party is more of a menace than a guy who favorably compares Vladimir Putin’s thirst for killing to that of the American government.
If you’re a Ryan constituent and don’t like his policies, then beat him in an election. Until that happens, the left’s primary achievement in recent years will be making it OK to use the word “pussy” in news stories.