Just as Scott Walker and his fellow Wisconsin Republicans triggered a backlash when they attacked Wisconsin public and private-sector workers, unionized or not, the Republicans in Congress just tripped over a hornet’s nest when they let the masks slip a bit too soon on their anti-people agenda:
Representative Paul D. Ryan [R-WI], the architect of the Republican budget proposal, faced a packed town meeting, occasional boos and a skeptical audience as he tried to lay out his party’s rationale for overhauling the health insurance program for retirees.
In a church theater [in Fort Lauderdale, Florida] on Tuesday evening, a meeting between Representative Allen B. West and some of his constituents began on a chaotic note, with audience members quickly on their feet, some heckling him and others loudly defending him. “You’re not going to intimidate me,” Mr. West said.
After 10 days of trying to sell constituents on their plan to overhaul Medicare, House Republicans in multiple districts appear to be increasingly on the defensive, facing worried and angry questions from voters and a barrage of new attacks from Democrats and their allies.
The proposed new approach to Medicare — a centerpiece of a budget that Republican leaders have hailed as a courageous effort to address the nation’s long-term fiscal problems — has been a constant topic at town-hall-style sessions and other public gatherings during a two-week Congressional recess that provided the first chance for lawmakers to gauge reaction to the plan.
An example of the response came Tuesday as Representative Daniel Webster, a freshman Republican from Florida, faced an unruly crowd at a packed town meeting in Orlando, where some people, apparently organized or encouraged by liberal groups, brandished signs saying “Hands Off Medicare” and demanded that he instead “tax the rich.”
Republicans are trying to hit back with a series of ads and robocalls — but curiously enough, the ads and robocalls don’t mention Paul Ryan’s granny-kicking, Medicare-killing budget. They’re also desperately trying to screen their town halls to keep out anyone who might give them anywhere near as hard a time as the orchestrated conservatives and Republicans who disrupted town halls last year and in 2009 gave Democratic congresscritters.
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