Responding To The Nuts

On a blog we can simply use moderation to avoid having to waste time responding to all the nuts but that isn’t an option at a public forum. Barney Frank handled one nut well who echoed  a crazy lady on Facebook in Alaska who claims that health care reform will lead to “death panels.”

While Frank attempted to respond to all questions, he gave up when one woman compared health care proposals favored by Frank and President Obama to policies of Nazi Germany.

“When you ask me that question, I’m going to revert to my ethnic heritage and ask you a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?” Frank asked.

“You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis,” he said, adding such behavior demonstrated the strength of First Amendment guarantees of what he called “contemptible” free speech.

“Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table,” Frank said to the woman. “I have no interest in doing it.”

While the woman was echoing the same talking points as many Republicans, it turned out that she is a LaRouche supporter. John McCormack of The Weekly Standard claims she is a Democrat and wrote,”No one disputes that LaRouchites are on the fringe — but it’s indisputable that they are fringe Democrats. They oppose Obamacare because they want a single-payer plan.”  David Weigel debunked this claim:

This is misleading. The LaRouche cultists oppose Obama’s plan because they think he’s trying to euthanize old people and the infirm. They oppose it for one of the reasons that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) oppose it, and they’re providing a lot of the “research” for this smear. Instead of grappling with this or rebutting the smear, McCormack smears Democrats, who have repeatedly purged these conspiracy theorists from their party…

This is gibberish. Conservatives are pointing to town hall protests as evidence that the country is turning against Democrats’ proposals for health care reform. It means something that deranged political activists are showing up to these rallies and mouthing some of the same rhetoric as conservatives.

Weigel is right, but I fear that responding to conservatives like McCormack with the facts is like trying to argue with a dining room table.

3 Comments

  1. 1
    Thingumbob says:

    As far as I can see, it looks like Frank doesn’t argue with tables at all, just stuffs everything on em into his gut.

  2. 2
    Eclectic Radical says:

    I watched this on video, on Leslie Parsley’s blog. It was great. I’d trade Phil Roe or Jason Mumpower (my congressmen) for Barney Frank in a heartbeat.

  3. 3
    Leslie Parsley says:

    Thingumbob: That’s the dumbest damn comment I’ve ever read and has absolutely nothing to do with the issues at hand. Maybe you should stuff something.

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