August 04, 2009 07:15 PM UTC

Well-Coordinated Health Care Protests Target Swing Democrats

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• by: Colorado Pols

From TPM:

This weekend, a group of teabaggers showed up at a town hall in Philadelphia with Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. They shouted and booed to drown out remarks from both officials and questions from the audience. The Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots reportedly brought 40 people…

In Austin on Saturday, protesters followed Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) out of a forum at a grocery store, chanting “Just say no!” after he told the crowd he’d vote for a health care reform bill even if his constituents opposed it. Watch.

These aren’t the first incidents of this kind, but we think it’s a pretty safe bet they’ll continue and intensify throughout August.

Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) has suspended town hall meetings after screaming protesters disrupted a June 22 forum in Long Island to the point where residents called the police to escort Bishop to his car.

Last week, a crowd erupted into thunderous applause after a soldier demanded an apology from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) at a town hall with her staff. (The senator wasn’t there.) The meeting was moderated by Americans for Prosperity’s Missouri chapter. AFP was a major organizer of the tax day “tea party” protests…

You can check out a strategy memo produced for town hall crashers here. With most of the Colorado delegation scheduling many such events in the next few weeks, we expect Jeff Crank’s local Americans for Prosperity chapter will put the volunteer lists they gathered at recent “Tea Parties” to good use–leave the swastikas at home, though. Make sure that’s in the email.

And we don’t want to subsidize this astroturf belligerence by linking, but let us just say that Rep. Ed Perlmutter might want to bring some extra friends with him to the, um, grocery store in the near future. We’ll keep our eyes out for more such rightie-ID’ed “opportunities.”