Maddow: GOP is using the ‘Brooks Brothers Riot’ playbook
Published: August 5, 2009
Updated 7 months ago
The angry mobs that have been shutting down town hall meetings called to discuss health care reform have reminded many people of an episode during the 2000 election generally known as the Brooks Brothers Riot.
“I think it is very similar,” Washington editor of The Nation Chris Hayes replied on Tuesday to a question from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about whether he thought the same strategy is being used currently by Republican-backed corporate lobbying groups.
A few weeks after the November 2000 election, when the outcome of the presidential race was hanging on the Florida recount, a raucous and unruly group of young Republican aides — some of whom were actually on the Bush recount committee’s payroll — rioted outside the room where over 10,000 ballots were being recounted in Miami-Dade County and forced the cancellation of the recount.
Although originally described as a spontaneous uprising, it soon became clear that the recount riot was organized by then-Congressman John Sweeney (R-NY), who had issued the order to “shut it down.”
“It’s difficult to sort of conduct any kind of public discourse, any kind of small-d democratic politics, in the face of this sort of implacable bullying, braying, and intimidation,” Hayes told Maddow. “And ’shut it down’ I think is really the kind of catchphrase for everything that we’re going to be seeing through the August recess in these townhalls.”
When Maddow asked whether the 2000 election might have turned out differently if the Democrats had gotten their own people down to Florida the same way the Republicans did, Hayes agreed, “It’s undeniable the Democrats got out-hustled and they got out-organized.”
“What the right is doing right now is corporate-sponsored and it’s astroturf, but it’s organizing,” Hayes explained. “There’s a set of very powerful interests that are spending literally millions of dollars a day to defeat this agenda … and the answer in a free democratic republic like our own is to meet organizing with more organizing, to not get out-hustled, to make sure that people who are going bankrupt from health insurance are showing up at these meetings.”
Hayes also agreed with Maddow’s suggestion that another tactic might be to publicize those “displays of extremism to try to splinter the people who were on the right.”
He noted that the Obama people are well-known for “a kind of judo — to use the excesses of your enemy against them” and pointed out that images of “the kind of red-faced, spittle-flecked anger” displayed at the town meetings are already being highlighted in Democratic responses.
This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Aug. 4, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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The Dems had 8 years of Bush and they couldn’t muster the will to organize a few angry mobs?
Just because you’re playing victim to ambush tactics doesn’t excuse the fact that the health care bill is a piece of sh*t.
How about drafting better legislation and you won’t have to worry about angry voters hijacking your events.
I agree. They do need to draft better legislation. The legislation needs to mandate a single-payer health insurance system. No exceptions. anything else only props up the old, failing system.
Angry voters? These aren’t angry VOTERS, they’re paid thugs.
2 things..
I agree that they need to fix the legislation; forcing insurance on the poor is wrong on many levels, and leaving the insurance companies in place when all they do is bleed the system and deny coverage to increase profits is wrong on many levels.
second, most of those “hijacking” aren’t angry voters because they learned about the bill/contents and got angry, they’re angry because some corporate interest is dictating to the morons at FOX to LIE about what’s there, and confuse and mislead the public.
The misconception associated to #2 up there is that voters have a righteous anger, but the problem is they are simply ignorant but respond anyway. Better legislation won’t help because what they are pissed about isn’t even in the damn bill.
Single payer, universal coverage, period. Someone’s health should not be a profit vehicle for the well off. Profiting from someone when they have no viable options is called EXTORTION, and is wrong.. on many levels.
Single payer
Premium free
Medicare for all
Big Pharma on diet
Zero insurance profit
No deductible & no co-pay
Off the table - Just like Impeachment was?!
DNC & RNC have BOTH sold out the country in order to enrich themselves.
Independents agree on more than we disagree.
Beware the divide and conquer.
(intellectual prostitution)
Did the same thing in 200 also hired homeless ..Just think of immature little children throwing tantrumns because we voted for a black man..It isnt going to work..
hardrain77: “The Dems had 8 years of Bush and they couldn’t muster the will to organize a few angry mobs?”
We had MILLIONS of people organize and peacefully protest. I guess you forgot about the MILLIONS that turned out in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc. to oppose the Iraq war plans before the war started. There were hundreds of peaceful protests that occured DURING the war. At every instance, we were accused of being traitors and terrorist sympathizers. Look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks just for saying they were ashamed Bush was from Texas!!!
hardrain77: “Just because you’re playing victim to ambush tactics doesn’t excuse the fact that the health care bill is a piece of sh*t.”
There isn’t a healthcare bill yet!! DUH! They are trying to draft a good bill that everyone can agree upon, but coached yellers and screamers on the right are doing their best to impede the process.
hardrain77: “How about drafting better legislation and you won’t have to worry about angry voters hijacking your events.”
Thats what they are trying do, and the yellers and screamers are part of the problem….not the solution!!
I think hardrain77 might really be petrifiedbrain2009. This is how dubya left our country. People that can think were unaffected except for anxiety attacks. His supporters (republicants/conservatwits) have been reduced to this type behavior of screaming ,disrupting and no valuable input. The repubs are driving close to the edge of the precipice called “almost irrelevant”. I hope it’s raining on that road and they drive off the side. You just know Rove is behind all this crap.
I can’t even remember the last time I heard anything about the war from Maddow or Olbermann, end even when i do it’s just aquick blurb, pretty worthless considering how many years we’ve been dropping bombs on people.
They’re worthless and pathetic. Anything but the war is their motto I think.
I’m getting rather tired of this idea that you can take two or three war-pig pieces of shit, put a smile on two of them and pretend they’re not all three war-pigs.
Let’s go back to the thirties, right out of hitler’s “brown” shirts, raiding political meetings……. I wonder what those “little” pricks that went to “christer” summer schools “learned” this summer? ……What caliber of gun would “jesus” carry?
She’s saying all of these people are paid off? Wow, what a reach. Wake up everyone, people are REALLY pissed off.
http://www.reboottherepublic.com
Just because you and your friends are throwing a hissy doesn’t negate the fact that three out of four Americans polled want Obama’s healthcare framework to guide the existing legislation. They’d prefer single-payer and something more like Medicare for all, but they recognize that they shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yes.. idiots that have no idea what is really in the bill who listen to the morons on FOX are “pissed off”.. and the language, the framing, the lies that are pissing them off come from FOX who makes money from someone who’s telling them what to say.. that’s “paid off”.
The sad thing is, the “individuals” that are screaming retardation at these meetings are just saps, dupes, idiots, morons, losers.. did I mention idiots? They are screaming about things that don’t even exist in some cases. Because the people with money put the message out there (wrong as it is) and the morons take their marching orders without thinking and regurgitate the lies.
This is typical of the current batch of Republicans and ‘Blue Dog Democrats’ I see every day whining about how they want their taxes lowered be it property taxes, income, sales or whatever. It class warfare people where Bush gave the rich a tax break while the rest of us funded his war. The people whining about property taxes and the rest are mean-spirited individuals who are self-centered ‘me-me-me’ little beotches like the kids back at school who only got to play with other children because it was their ball. They want everything while paying for nothing.
As for health care, the unfortunate part is that we could all benefit from a better health care system. $80,000 for 5 days in the hospital to remove a lodged toothpick in a man’s colon was today’s news. People are satisfied with that? What fools these ‘Birthers’ & ‘Tea-baggers’ are that they can’t see how they are being manipulated by the puppeteers of Big Pharma and Neo-Cons. But let them need something and then here them whine.