The White House launched a coordinated effort Tuesday to combat what it calls a “viral whisper campaign” to torpedo health care reform.
Its playbook: the same one Barack Obama’s campaign used in 2008 to shoot down rumors and questions about his citizenship, faith and patriotism.
The new offensive started early Tuesday morning when the White House posted a video response to a hodgepodge of clips on the Drudge Report that portrayed President Obama as favoring the elimination of private insurance. On the White House blog, Obama’s director of new media, Macon Phillips, asked supporters to send in leads for debunking chain e-mails or anything else that “seems fishy.”
It continued through the day with press secretary Robert Gibbs and Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse both saying a series of confrontational town hall meetings were manufactured by Republicans, conservative groups and lobbyists who are paid to drum up opposition.
Woodhouse described them as “angry mobs of rabid right-wing extremists” that populated McCain-Palin rallies last year.
Tuesday was just the start of the offensive, White House aides said
Please read Carrie’s full article at – White House launches attacks on attacks – Carrie Budoff Brown – POLITICO.com.
Tea Party-bashers gone wild
Some panicked congressional targets of the Tea Party movement have responded by shutting their offices, closing their blinds, and shooing pesky constituents off public property. The White House health czar’s office is mustering up Internet snitches to report “inaccurate” blog posts and “casual conversations” from health care opponents. And liberal bloggers and cable yakkers are waging their own war on the Tea Party movement by redefining participatory democracy as “thuggery” and “hooliganism.”
Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall bemoaned a fiscal conservative activist’s memo offering advice on how to “pack the hall..spread out” and challenge politician’s early “to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda.” Horrors! “This amounts to a sort of civic vigilanteism,” Marshall fretted.
No, showing up at a congressional town hall and booing a talking points-programmed political hack isn’t “civic vigilantism.” Throwing rocks, pouring cement on train tracks, blocking military shipments, smashing windows, hurling paint, slashing tires, vandalizing businesses, and throwing shoes are vigilante acts.
That is what the anti-war, anti-free trade, anti-Bush mobsters did over the last eight years – and there wasn’t a peep about those brute tactics from Obama’s blogging pals now.
No, showing up at a congressional town hall and booing a talking points-programmed political hack isn’t “civic vigilantism.” Throwing rocks, pouring cement on train tracks, blocking military shipments, smashing windows, hurling paint, slashing tires, vandalizing businesses, and throwing shoes are vigilante acts.
That is what the anti-war, anti-free trade, anti-Bush mobsters did over the last eight years – and there wasn’t a peep about those brute tactics from Obama’s blogging pals now.
Read the full article at Michelle Malkin » Tea Party-bashers gone wild.
Editor Note – If you would like to participate in what the White House is calling “angry mobs of rabid right-wing extremists” here is a list of the Health Care Town Hall meetings across the nation Nationwide Health Care Town Hall Meeting Schedule
I wonder when Moveon.org and others were protesting in such great numbers, why the extremist lable wasn’t applied to them as well? Michelle Malkin gives us several examples of what Mob Rule Looks like. Some might rememeber Michelle being pushed around along with other peaceful protesters.