Rachel Maddow and author Frank Schaeffer take on the healthcare town hall disruptors (video: The Rachel Maddow Show, via firedoglake at YouTube)
In the video above, the author of Crazy for God, Frank Schaeffer, shares his unique perspective, as a former religious right insider, on what is happening at healthcare town hall meetings across the country with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Here’s a bit more from an essay by Frank Schaeffer at Religion Dispatches from a couple of days ago:
Lies, Intimidation, and the Insurance Industry: The Republicans Have Lost Their Minds
In which the author describes how former Republican congressman Dick Armey went from decent guy to head of an angry mob.
The Republican Old Guard are in the fix an atheist would be in if Jesus showed up and raised his mother from the dead: Their world view has just been shattered. Obama’s election has literally driven them over the edge.
Consider former congressman Dick Armey. Several far right foundations and the multitrillion dollar health-insurance industry have teamed up with him to organize the far right foot soldiers of the Republican Party to intimidate people speaking on behalf of health-care reform. They are using my old shock troops — given that many of these folks were first energized by the Evangelical pro-life movement that my late father and I started in the 1970s. What we did to clinics they are now doing to congressmen and others speaking out for health care reform. It’s called intimidation.
Having failed at the ballot box, having watched their Fox News-organized “tea parties” fizzle, the intimidation tactics which the Republicans have embraced are being used in a well-financed, top-down orchestrated fake grass roots campaign by corporate interests to try and protect the profits of the insurance business.
Schaeffer says of the right’s “scorched earth policy:”
Dick Army and company have been driven mad by their reversal, not just of political fortunes but of seeing that they’ve wasted their lives. They now know they were wrong: about the country, the free market, war for fun and profit, and what the American people really want. They made their best case and were rejected by the American people — and by history. Bush was their man and he turned out to be a fool. So now all the the Republican gurus have left is what the defeated Germans of World War Two had: a scorched earth policy. If they can’t win then everyone must go down. Obama must fail! The country must fail!
The scary thing is: Schaeffer’s absolutely right.
Comments
One Comment so far. Comments are closed.it’s interesting how people who compare obamacare to the nazi eugenics movement are portrayed as inciting violence. how does one draw that conclusion? then to support your views you have a frank shafer clip in which he calls obamacare protesters stupid, racist, and bad americans as if protesting a health care plan is some crazy reprehensible act. also, each case of reported violence in these “town hall” meetings has been instigated by obama supporters. are you even capable of seeing the lunacy and hypocrisy in the reactions of obama supporters to a simple protest? and why are these obama supporters, especially in media, playing the race card? it’s insanity, and it comes off as desperation by people who cannot handle dissent.