Two Questions For Democrats

posted at 5:11 am on August 11, 2009 by Mitch Berg

…especially any of you that have ever used the term “teabagger” to refer to a conservative exercising his/her free speech, and/or written any conservative grass-roots action off to “astroturfing”:

1. So I take it you’ll be ignoring all of the “research” and “data” coming from astroturf anti-gun groups like “The Brady Campaign”, The “Violence Policy Center” and – to pick an example local to me, “Citizens for a “Safer” Minnesota, from now on.  Right?  Because y’all seem to take them pretty seriously today.  Even though the “groups” are basically shells; CSM is basically two women, Dr. Rebecca Thoman (who is an OBGYN, not an emergency room trauma surgeon, by the way) and her majordomo, Heather Martens.  Other anti-gun groups may be bigger – but none of them have enough actual members on the ground to compare with the likes of the NRA, which has north of three million members (Brady may have had 150,000 members in the nineties, and is a shadow of this today; other groups are much smaller).
2. Let’s accept, for the moment, that all of the conservative response at Town Hall meetings, and all of the Tea Parties, are in fact being coordinated by some cabal of right-leaning “astroturf” groups.  OK – so what?  Do you think that just because someone sets a meeting and says “let’s protest”, that it’ll draw a crowd?  Especially a crowd of conservatives – pelple who never come out to picket, wave signs or chant slogans?  With Democrats, of course, it’s true – to paraphrase Fred Thompson in The Hunt for Red October, Democrats don’t take a restroom break without some gropu gtelling them where to go or what to do.  But conservatives?  Election day is the biggest “demonstration” most conservatives ever make it to, ever, their lives.  So even if there were some shadowy cabal out there, what makes you think people would come to the town halls and tea parties if the anger wasn’t very , very genuine?

Of course, you do know that’s the truth – which is why the campaigns to mock, dismiss and intimidate these outbursts are being coordinated from the White House itself.

But since “astroturf” is newly “un-american”, I figured I’d give all you stalwarts in the lefty alt-media a chance to show your consistency.

Go to it!

Cross-posted at Shot In The Dark

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