August 18, 2009 05:33 PM UTC

On The Relative Civility of Obama's Grand Junction Town Hall

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• by: Colorado Pols

Grand Junction Sentinel columnist Bill Grant has a worthy take:

Rep. Steve King must have gone to bed a disappointed politician Saturday night. In a churlish online letter to The Daily Sentinel on Wednesday, King bragged, “the fact is most people in Mesa County will listen to the president on Obama-care the same day the president listens to JUCO on throwing a baseball. It is just not going to happen.”

We can only imagine what King thought his constituents would do instead of listen. Descriptions of the sandbagging of Sen. Bennett by a hostile crowd at a meeting in Pueblo, or the organized show of “spontaneous” resistance seen in congressional districts in Colorado and around the country probably provide the best models of the behavior he encourages. Nice behavior to enhance the public image of Grand Junction on national TV, not to mention the insult to the democratic process.

Calling the president’s proposal “socialized medicine” and the public meeting “an invitation only, scripted town hall,” King puts himself squarely in the Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck school of non-thinking, ditto-head politics.

Meant to stop health care reform by stopping debate and intimidating politicians, this approach is more likely to simply drive a wedge between this vocal fringe element and people of all political parties and persuasions who recognize the growing crisis in health care and the need for serious reform.

It turns out that the most scripted part of the meeting was the undercover operative from conservative state Sen. Greg Brophy’s office who challenged Obama to an Oxford style debate. His dishonesty in not disclosing his affiliation suggests that another generation of young Republicans is continuing the Nixon-Rove school of politics. King is an eager pupil of their tactics…

The people King confidently predicted would never listen to Obama not only listened, but cheered him on. From the rousing welcome that greeted him, to the standing ovation at the end, people from King’s district and beyond listened with care to what the president said, and agreed with most of it.

Most of those who disagreed on some issues, did so more through reserved silence than boisterous objection. The occasional boos were few enough to be individually heard. Nobody tried to shout the president down. King must have been disappointed by this show of civility.

It seems there was a difference in the mood inside all three of the Obama town halls from the chaotic scenes everyone has watched play out at congressional recess events around the country. Some are quick to attribute this to some kind of biased selection process for ticketholders, but there’s no actual evidence of that–as the presence of Sen. Greg Brophy’s staffer, and many others who disagreed with the President indicates. It further underscores, in our opinion, the weakness of agitating crazies to unthinkingly shout down your political opponents on complex issues: once confronted authoritatively, your mobs become a liability.

We think that, when you get right down to it, most people just don’t have the stones to ask the President to his face why he “wants to kill Grandma.”

More good observations on Obama’s Junction town hall at the Colorado Independent.