Dems and Reps go for Political Theater
House Democrats make an impulse decision Sunday to walk back from the caucus meeting outside and through a throng of protesters.
A leadership aide said the Caucus made the decision right before wrapping up their meeting in the Cannon House Office building.
The move threw the Capitol Police for a loop, as they had to scramble to bolster their security wall knowing that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was about to put herself within arms reach of an angry crowd that just a day earlier shouted racial and anti-gay slurs at Democrats. One protester was arrested for allegedly spitting on an African American Congressman.
The march across Independence Ave. back to the Capitol went off largely without a hitch.
A Democratic aide said a protester shouted “Dennis Kucinich you’re a traitor!” Kucinich this week announced his support after voting againt the House bill on the grounds that it was not progressive enough.
The crow of anti-healthcare protesters had been separated by police from a group of bill supporters.
It’s a bit of a Team Building Experience, somehow akin to something that might be done as a Retreat Exercise. But it’s political purpose is something along the lines of, oh — Texas 1960 with Vice Presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson.
On Nov 4, 1960, campaigning hard in what appeared to be an uphill effort to keep his own state of Texas from going Republican, Sen Lyndon B Johnson and his wife found themselves in the midst of an incredible scene in the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. The Democratic vice presidential candidate and Lady Bird arrived for a noon luncheon barely an hour after Dallas Republicans had finished whooping it up for Richard M Nixon at a rally in the same hotel. Several hundred persons, including Dallas’ then-congressman, Republican Bruce Alger, were waiting for the Johnsons. The mood was ugly. Alger carried a sign saying: “LBJ Sold Out to Yankee Socialists.” Other placards called the seantor a “Judas.”
Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird were engulfed by the crowd, and for more than half an hour, were reviled and jostled as they slowly made their way across the lobby. Johnson refused offers of police assistance, telling an aide that “if the time has come that I can’t walk with my lady across the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel, than I want to know it.” The incident blazed across the nation’s television screens and newspaper headlines. The effect was remarkable. As Rowland Evans and Robert Novak recall in their book [], the mob scene in the Adolphus “outraged thousands of Texans and … southerners … Sen Richard Russell , who had not campaigned for his party’s national ticket since 1944, telephoned Johnson that evening to offer his services . . . and Russell campaigned through Texas with Johnson.” While no one can prove the proposition, these Johnson biographers conclude that it is a “credible hypothesis” that the Adolphus incident swung Texas, and perhaps other closely contested southern states into the Democratic column.
The rest of this January 1968 article is absurd, of course, from a historical context.  But Nixon grabbed the mantle of the “the other side are kooks” sentiment, and protected various political grabs like this one.
So, that’s part of the Democratic Party Political Theater of the moment. What of the Republican Party’s Political Theater? Well, the Republicans are offering Amendment after Amendment to change the Bill so as to get it back to the House for ratification. The one that’s receiving the most attention is from Doctor Tom Coburn, to … reduce the cost of providing federally funded prescription drugs by eliminating fraudulent payments and prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists and for drugs intended to induce abortion.
What else? Defund ACORN!
Then there’s Michelle Bachman’s Repeal bill. It’s simple. And not going to happen. We’ll have to keep tuned in to see who co-signs.
Then there’s their current strategy of signing out at 2 pm.
Perhaps the Democrats should walk past them very slowly and film it, make the crazies the opponents.