No one should be fooled into thinking that the made-for-TV raucous and angry responses over the repeal of ObamaCare from what appear to be large numbers of constituents at Congressmen’s district town hall meetings is spontaneous or representative of anything other than a small minority of trained activists.
President Trump even took to Twitter and wrote: “The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!”
Here’s more detail on the real story:
We all know that, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” was one of the famous lies that greased the skids for the passage of Obamacare. Barack Obama, doubling down, is now the first ex-president in 228 years of U.S. history to seek to nullify the will of the people manifest in a national election by structuring and leading a political organization—a shadow government—for the purpose of preserving failed policies and undermining the successor administration. The primary vehicle of Obama’s campaign to accomplish this sabotage is Organizing for Action (OFA), which was legally founded in January 2013 by First Lady Michelle Obama and her husband’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina, with input from David Axelrod and more recently from former senior adviser David Plouffe.
Obama’s OFA Washington HQ is now the nerve center that coordinates 250 offices nationwide with some 30,000 agitators. According to the OFA website and internal communication, it has plans “to stage 400 rallies across 42 states to attack Trump and Republicans over ObamaCare’s repeal.”
Five days ago, OFA released its “Congressional Recess Toolkit,” a training manual for activists and demonstrators, invoking them to go in groups and get to meeting halls early and “spread out…throughout the front half of the room, [which] will make the perception of broad consensus a reality for your member of congress.” Further, the OFA Recess Toolkit invokes protest attendees to “record everything,” and include clips of the member of Congress interacting with the protester, which is key to getting “picked up by local and national media and spread all over social media as well. Don’t forget about Facebook Live!… and use the hashtag #CareNotChaos.”
As honest Abe Lincoln once said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Fake news of course feeds off fake mass protests.
Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle. Email him at scottp@discovery.org