news-record.com

My column today:

While I was enjoying a cool vacation in northern Michigan last week (temperatures in Harbor Springs topped out at 72), the health care debate was heating up.

Or were some people lighting torches and looking for something to burn?

Here’s the take from Organizing for America, a creation of the Democratic National Committee, which sends me regular e-mails:

“Special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it’s getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats.”

The message urged me to visit U.S. Rep. Howard Coble’s Greensboro office to state my support for health care reform.

Nothing was said about bringing matches. (Coble, a Republican, announced last week that he’ll vote against the Democrats’ reform bill.)

Seriously, what about these charges of mob violence?

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reported last week: “Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.), president of the freshman Democratic class, warned that right-wing groups are taking things to 'a dangerous level’ by manufacturing anger based on false information.

“ 'When you look at the fervor of some of these people who are all being whipped up by the right-wing talking heads on Fox, to me, you’re crossing a line,’ Connolly said. 'They’re inciting people to riot with just total distortions of facts. They think we’re going to euthanize Grandma and the government is going to take over.’
 

“Connolly said he spoke to at least one freshman Democrat who was physically assaulted at a local event.”

I haven’t seen any direct news report of an assault on a congressman or any riots. More reliably, our own Brad Miller reported receiving a death threat last week, which his office passed to Capitol Police for investigation.

The incident was widely reported, with the political Web site talkingpointsmemo.com stating that Miller, a Democrat from Raleigh whose district includes parts of Greensboro, won’t hold any town hall meetings during the August congressional recess as a result of the threat — even though he didn’t have any scheduled anyway.

“Our point is, we’re not gonna be bullied into having a town hall so it can then be interrupted by the fake grass-roots folks,” Miller’s communications director, LuAnn Canipe, told the publication.

I spoke with Canipe, too. She confirmed the threat and said Miller was meeting with constituents individually and in small groups as usual. No, he never holds town hall meetings, which aren’t productive.

Coble, by the way, feels the same.

“Howard stopped doing town hall meetings 20 years ago,” his top aide, Ed McDonald, said Monday. “They attracted people who just wanted a soap box.”

Despite his stance against the Democrats’ reform proposal, Coble recently was shouted at by two people traveling with an Americans for Prosperity bus for not holding a town hall meeting. AFP, like Coble, opposes reform, so it’s probably true that some of its members just want to shout at a congressman in a public forum.

On the other hand, Organizing for America, the Democratic group, also is trying to turn up the heat — and it’s no more of an authentic grass-roots outfit than is its opposite number. Are its tactics less hostile? Maybe on this issue, although people on both sides of the debate are getting pretty hot.

Coble can’t exactly report a death threat, McDonald said, but a constituent recently wrote that if he doesn’t support health care reform, “You’re worthless and you should kill yourself.”

Does that count?

The fact is that this is a big, big issue. People feel strongly about it, they’re taking sides, and they don’t all need some  political outfit to stir them up.

Nor are more than a few dangerous crackpots. Most of us — I’m including myself — probably are confused about how these thousand-page bills written in gobbledygook really will affect our future health and finances. People have questions, and they’d like answers. Or, maybe some just want to get out and wave a sign in front of their representative’s office. Anything wrong with that?

It’s too easy to use angry demonstrators as an excuse to shut out the legitimate concerns of ordinary Americans.

The real danger is not that someone might shout at a politician, or even say something stupid, but that the politician will refuse to listen in the first place.

What do they say about someone who can’t stand the heat?

Thanks for reading. You can call me at 373-7039, email at dgclark@news-record.com or post a comment here.