I'm not defending every person who has vented his or her anger at the recent town hall meetings. Some of the behavior, especially at the Steny Hoyer meeting, makes me wince, and I wish some of the more obstreperous folk would be a little more respectful and less obnoxious in expressing their frustrations. But, having said that, the Democrat National Committee ad that's been airing on tv the last couple of days impugning these people is really shameless.
The ad alleges that these irate folks are actually extremists who are being manipulated, orchestrated, and funded by "high level GOP operatives" and organizations. This is simply an absurd slander as Mary Katherine Ham documents at The Weekly Standard.
It turns out that the "high level Republican operative" who produced the memo that appears on the DNC ad is a libertarian who writes on Facebook to about twenty friends. The fact that he is a very minor figure in his state's politics, however, didn't hinder the DNC from producing a piece that deliberately gives viewers the impression that what's happening at town halls across the country is some sort of nationwide conspiracy organized and funded by nefarious and powerful Republican fat cats.
Here's the ad:
It's pretty ludicrous, actually, to label thousands of mostly senior citizens "extremists" because they refuse to go gently into Democrat health care nirvana. It's also a sign of desperation. Check out Ham's account at the link.
