Twice as Hard

"Punch back twice as hard," sayeth Papabama's peeps. Punch back? Surely you mean with arguments, to counter the arguments raised by the loyal opposition, Deputy Chief of Staff Messina?

After all, according to the Politico article linked above, you played a video exhorting the senators at your little pep rally to "do more prep work than usual for their public meetings." Sounds reasonable, right? You'd want the Senators to bone up on the legislation and have the facts at their disposal so they could present a reasonable defense of President Obama's vision for nationalized health care.

But wait, that's not exactly what you meant by "prep work," is it? Because the sentence in the article actually reads:

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out [emph. mine], senators and aides said.

Hit back twice as hard...and make sure you've got plenty of your own people there. That doesn't sound at all provocative, does it?

But don't worry, average joe conservative, as you head out the door to the town hall in order to participate in this grand experiment called democracy. I'm sure our democratic friends are just as interested in a civil and cool-headed exchange of ideas as we are. I'm sure the Deputy Chief of Staff wasn't at all implying that there is any place for intimidation or the threat of violence at these events when he used language like "punch back twice as hard," and stressed the need for democrats to have their people there.

After all, the republicans are the mob, remember? They are the crazies. They are the ones who get out of hand. And those high-minded democrats, brimming over with self confidence and good will, surely realize that reason and common sense are the best weapons. There will be none of these heavy-fisted, GOP-style tactics among the democrats, who, armed with logic and facts, are liberated to simply allow their ideas to speak for them.

Therefore, this incident in St. Louis, where a black conservative was called racial slurs and beaten by an angry mob, simply did not happen.

Neither this obviously faked video from Rep. Kathy Castor's town hall meeting in Tampa, in which it appears to the untrained eye that some of Castor's goons are roughing up her critics. (Is there no low to which these shameless and deceitful republicans will not stoop?)

Because no reasonable person could construe that these two fictitious events in any way embody the spirit of the message sent by the Obama administration that democrat politicians should have "their supporters" on hand should the need for "punching back twice as hard" emerge.

You don't need to see his identification. These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along.