According to Bloomberg, Republicans are complaining that town hall protests against the Ryan Medicare plan are basically phony:
U.S. House Republicans pushing to overhaul Medicare dismiss the vocal opposition some have encountered from constituents as orchestrated by political foes.
They’re blaming much of the criticism voiced at town-hall meetings, which sometimes turned raucous, on activists dispatched by MoveOn.org and other Democratic allies, even as some of the lawmakers
have taken measures to control the tone of forums. “This is not genuine anger over Medicare; it’s manufactured political anger that’s causing the disturbances,” said Representative Lou Barletta, a freshman Republican from Pennsylvania.
You know what? Barletta is mostly right. But that’s not really the problem. After all, a lot of the tea party town hall protests in 2009 were pretty much orchestrated too. Here’s the problem: liberals are lousy at pretending that their protests are organic. Ever since the Ryan plan has come out, I’ve been reading endless tweets and blog posts about how liberals need to create a ruckus at congressional town halls. Or, alternatively, complaining that liberals aren’t doing a good enough job of creating a ruckus at congressional town halls. Or wondering when liberals are going to rise up in wrath. Or something.
As a result, even I haven’t really taken any of these various ruckuses very seriously. They’re just too obviously contrived to be our equivalent of the tea party protests. And my guess is that the press is yawning for the same reason. You can’t make protest plans in public for a couple of weeks and then turn around and try to convince reporters that this is all a grass roots effort.
The left has always been pretty good at organizing large-scale marches and protests. But fake grass roots uprisings? Not so good. The right has us beat hollow on that kind of thing.
