More On The Astroteabaggers

by digby

Media Matters catches Rush hyping the faux protests at Democratic town halls:

Rush explained that he was illustrating a point here — the media always laments after low turnout elections that more people need to get involved in politics. But when you get involved, Time magazine does stories asking if there is too much democracy — as Rush states they did back in the 90s. Rush referred back to the Kathleen Sebelius-Arlen Specter town hall — you’re supposed to be quiet, respectful, and believe everything they say, but they’re getting hell from “average Americans.” Rush said the crowd was shouting that they were lying — they know they’re lying, but they don’t think that you know they’re full of it. Rush went on to play another town hall-gone-to-chaos, this one of Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) from back in June. We want to point out that while Rush repeatedly describes these town hall events as being taken over by regular Americans who know that their representatives are “full of it,” the truth is that those voicing their discontent are activists of the teabagger sort who show up specifically to heckle their members of Congress “in an effort to sway the debate and drown out reform supporters.” After the break, Rush took a caller who made essentially the same point we just did in the previous paragraph. She said she heard from Richard Wolffe on MSNBC saying that the “hoopla” is coming from right-wing organizations in cahoots with insurance companies, and individuals are being bused into the meetings and told to be disruptive. Rush was skeptical this story was true, saying that he doesn’t trust Richard Wolffe or NBC as sources, but said that even if it was, it was about time conservatives had something to counter ACORN and union rent-a-mobs that liberals have used for years. Rush can complain about the media all he wants and malign them as a source, but this isn’t sourced to Richard Wolffe or Politico — it’s sourced to a memo from tea party organizers themselves on how to best “rock the town halls.” As we just explained, this is all about political activists who believe Obama is a socialist making waves and creating a false sense of turmoil.

You’ll recall that during the Bush years they just ejected anyone who disagreed from their town halls — even those who simply had a critical bumper sticker. Of course anyone who disagreed with bush was committing treason, so that’s totally different.

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