Even before the disastrous election outcome last night in New York’s 26th Congressional District, Republican House members have tried hard to avoid the town hall shouting matches that Democrats encountered in 2009 regarding health care reform.
This time, the issue is overhauling Medicare — the Ryan plan — and some GOP lawmakers across the nation have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid confrontations at public forums and to keep opponents out in the cold.
Last week, when House members spent the week at home in their districts, Republican Rep. Justin Amash held a town hall meeting in his hometown of Grand Rapids sponsored by a Tea Party organization, but a group of senior citizens and two reporters/bloggers were denied admittance to the Saturday gathering.
According to the liberal blog Michigan Messenger, about eight senior citizens arrived at the Prince Conference Center on the Calvin College campus for a chance to question Amash concerning his vote to turn Medicare into a voucher program in the future.
Once barred from attending the event, the seniors stood out in the parking lot where they took questions from two bloggers who were denied access. Eventually, six college security guards arrived on the scene and said that both the seniors and the bloggers had to leave, according to the Messenger.
A couple of the organizers, upon hearing that writers and constituents were being barred from the event, said there had to be some sort of mistake and apologized, indicating they would remedy the situation by sparking with the freshman congressman as soon as he was available.
But Lisa Dupont, an organizer with the Tea Party of West Michigan, said it was intentional to deny media access to the event.
“That’s our choice,” Dupont said. “We just wanted it to be laid back and comfortable; we’re asking the questions.”
Dupont added that when media are in the room it creates an atmosphere of “nervousness” and if they opened up the event to the press it “then becomes about the press.”
Despite the bloggers’ willingness to compromise — agreeing not to ask questions during the event, agreeing not to shoot video or photos, and offering to pay the $10 registration fee — they were still not allowed inside.
And, curiously, Amash never listed the event on his we site.
Joe DiSano, a Democratic political consultant for Main Street Strategies in Lansing, said these occurrences are not unusual, though they’re not ethical.
“There are two types of political pranks you can pull,” said DiSano. “The first is just being obnoxious — just doing stuff to annoy your opponents. The second consists of the pranks that underline an issue or highlight a position of an opponent.”
“Clearly what happened in Grand Rapids … is an example of the latter,” he added, asserting that Amash did not want seniors or online writers to take in the event. “… Amash didn’t want them there and that is why they were barred from the event, regardless of what he said. He is trying to keep his radical far-right agenda separate from senior citizens who would question his recent vote to abolish Medicare.”
