Posted by: Sister Toldjah on August 6, 2009 at 9:47 am
Mary Katharine Ham has published a pretty in depth piece on a guy popular liberal blogs are making out to be one of the alleged ” ringleaders” of the “coordinated right wing mobs” at the ObamaCare town halls (via Pundit and Pundette):
Right Principles has a Facebook group with 23 members and a Twitter account with five followers. MacGuffie describes himself as an “opponent of leftist thinking in America,” and told me he’s “never pulled a lever” for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.
Think Progress highlighted his memo’s directives to “‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’,” calling it a “right-wing harassment strategy against Dems.” The blog falsely connected MacGuffie to the national conservative group FreedomWorks through the most tenuous of threads. The Think Progress link that purports to establish MacGuffie as a FreedomWorks “volunteer” leads to his one blog posting on a Tea Party website (on the free social networking site, ning.com). Think Progress calls Tea Party Patriots a “FreedomWorks website.”
The problem is it’s not a FreedomWorks site, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon. FreedomWorks is a “coalition partner” of TeaPartyPatriots.org, but does not fund the site in any way.
[...]
The Rachel Maddow Show repeated Think Progress’ reporting on MacGuffie’s connections, showing the memo, and declaring its author “affiliated with an organization called FreedomWorks.”
The DNC has now made the memo the centerpiece of its “Mob” ad out today, from which I grabbed this screen shot, at the :40 mark. [Video here - ST]
[...]
The voice over for this image says behavior at health-care town halls is “straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives.”
Or, the memo of Bob MacGuffie of Fairfield, Conn., who once wrote a blog post on Tea Party Patriots, a site that is not funded or hosted by FreedomWorks. It’s all the same if you’re looking to discredit an entire movement of real voters, I suppose.
This takedown is too good and I didn’t excerpt near what I wanted to, so make sure to read the whole thing. The DNC is using this guy as the “face” of the so-called “coordinated mobs” and so are popular liberal blogs like Think Progress and left wing prime time shows like Rachel Maddow’s.
Last night, I watched a little bit of coverage about the ObamaCare townhalls on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox and saw video clips of some of the town halls. A lot of of the people who are standing up and making their voices heard are older people and seniors. Who’da thought the VRWC had an aggressive seniors division? Seriously, these are the people the DNC and the admin are painting as “right wing goons and thugs and liars” simply because the actions of a few over the top people have given them the opportunity to embellish, exaggerate, and lie about the individual concerns many Americans have about ObamaCare.
When will the DNC and the Obama admin apologize for the outright slander they are perpetuating against real people who are fed up and are demanding answers rather than just talking points? On the 12th of Never, I’m sure. Demonizing the oposition is a much easier way they can use to try and get out of the mess they’ve created for themselves with this monstrosity of a bill.
It’s the Chicago Potomac Way.
Velvet Lair
NEVER!
He said he wanted to CHANGE this country and that is what he is doing. Welcome Karl Marx. Just remember…the elists don’t have to use ObamaCare and they don’t have to follow the same rules that the rest of us. When Liberals protest, yell, and make outrageous claims–they are being democratic. If anyone else does it, we are potential terrorists–like Bill Ayres? And what about ACORN and thier behaviors? Hang on to your guns! They are next to go.
After reading the “secret” memo, I must say that it really isn’t that “secret” or shocking. Most Leftists who did any protesting in college should find the techniques mentioned in the memo familiar … it even mentions “Use the Alinsky playbook of which the Left is so fond: freeze it, attack it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Better yet, it outlines how to box in a cagey politicians who are used to answering questions without actually answering them.
Mahatma Gandhi would be proud to espouse and use the techniques described. Frankly, what is missing is any mention of violence or rushing the stage, a staple of Leftist attempts to suppress free speech on college campuses.
Is being effective at a gathering for public discourse a crime or unethical ? … what’s the big deal ?
Where’s the smoking gun that shows the $40 million dollars being pumped in like ObamaCare’s proponents are doing ? .. all those “paid” volunteers.
Once again Think Progress shows that they do neither.
Thank you for all the work you have done in bringing these issues to public attention. I did some more work, and the situation seems to be even worse – the Privacy Act may have a loophole that allows Obama to keep a list of dissenters.
I’ve been down with pneumonia, but I’m posting this from bed. NOTHING will stop me from fighting this 21st Century Fascist.
We first heard from the birthers, with their fake “birth certificate” in hand and with their fake outrage. These are the same under tones that you saw from Republicans during the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, “you are not like us” or “you are too different”, “you are not main stream”. And then they act surprised when people do not vote with them, they are lost, no core beliefs, too bad.
In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while at the same time trying to take away their rights) and that’s who they need to focus on if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”.
It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people. And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown, Katrina, and the Walter Reed Scandal but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.
What’s funny is why they think the term Republican or right wing is so scary or an insult. The left and socialist Democrats are scary as they are commiting treason by trying to overturn what is promised by our Constitution and Bill of Rights – individual rights, states rights, freedom of speech and I wish they add a new one – separation of labor (unions) and state. I am tired of govt workers who are paid by the taxpayer being involved in rabble rousing and sending money to politicans. This should be illegal.
Paul said:
Charlie McCarthy speaks!
LINK
Great post, just 2 quick comments: don’t forget a lot of those “older” people voted for Reagan when they were younger, they aren’t as Democrat as previous older generations — my very first vote was for Reagan against Ford in 1976 when I turned 18 (argh,I am SO old!) And second, older people get sicker and consume more health care, so this will directly affect them in a way it may not affect folks under 50 (although it will hose everyone in the end.) You betcha older people are worried — and they ought to be!!!
With any luck, we’ll make them sorry by voting the bums out of office.
Paul, I’m proud to be 1) a fundamentalist Christian, 2) a conservative right-wing Constitutionalist and 3) a firm believer in states’ rights.
That said, I thought Sotomayor was as good a choice we’ll ever get out of His Hollowness. I hope she doesn’t become another Ginsberg, but I fear she will.
I will not press you to believe as I do, but I will press you to allow me to worship as I see fit. I believe the Constitution protects religion from the grubby mechinations of the state, but (as clearly stated in the Constitution) the state has no right to prevent me from worshipping as I see fit on land I own.
And as far as “faceless bureaucrats” go, those bozos are answerable to no one, make up rules as they go along, have the power to make or break nearly any project on whim, and, as long as they show up and don’t kill anyone, are pretty much invulnerable to accountability. I should know – I was one for nine years, till I couldn’t stand it any more. There are some good people working for government at nearly all levels, but for the most part they are not much more than well-paid welfare recipients whose job it is to make lives miserable, starting with our Community-Organizer-in-Chief.
Those “faceless bureaucrats” at the insurance companies, however, do have to perform because they are accountable to several people. Hate to burst your bubble, bub, but that’s a fact of life in any private business. That’s why it works.
Now, I don’t know what funny kind of smokes you been using, but last I heard the Congress was not willing to put itself on the healthcare program being proposed (take your choice which version), and the health care in the VA is somewhat lower that you’ll find in an inner city charity hospital emergency department, which makes it something I’m not real excited about going to for help. Considering the VA, Amtrak, Social Security and the USPS, I’d say I’m not real excited about my all-knowing, all-compassionate and all-seeing (with its new WH snitch network) guvmint making my decisions for me, for any reason on any level.