Seriously. The Teabaggers may have made the difference.
I called my congressman's office on Monday to express my thanks for his vote on the health care bill. I also thanked the staffer who answered the call for working the phones and for putting up with the abusive calls. He told me that they got a lot of them.
Now I don't know about you, but as for me, I've never found it to be very persuasive when people threaten me and and insult me and yell at me in order to motivate me to do something. It often works the other way; I'll not do what they want at all, I'll figure out a way to fuck up the works of what they want done or, at the very least, I'll take my own sweet time about it and make sure that whatever I do for them is the barest of bare minimums.
I expect that I'm not the only person like that.
So when the Teabaggers called up the staffers of the congressmen who had not made up their minds and yelled at them, and when they screamed at the staffers of the congressmen who were leaning towards the bill, I'll bet that was reported to the congressmen. I wouldn't be a tad bit surprised if there were not a few congressmen who concluded "fuck these assholes" and voted for the bill.
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5 comments:
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you're right.
There's no point in contacting legislators that aren't even remotely friendly to your position. It's one reason I don't email my Senators about gun control bills unless they're just borderline or possibly misunderstood by my Senators. (Carl Levin supported a ban on 30-30 ammunition once. Odds are he didn't know what that even was but Ted Kennedy was telling everybody it was a cop killer round so he supported a ban on it. Stuff like that I might contact them about. National concealed carry? Not a chance.)
I'm a wee bit happy about some of the stuff in the passed health care bill but I predict it'll be a financial clusterfuck. Sure, the CBO says it'll reduce the deficit, now, but in a few years, before the thing is in full force, the hammer is going to swing more to the Republican side of the aisle and they'll screw with the taxes that are supposed to fund it without touching the benefits. By 2012 trying to remove the upsides of this legislation will be the death mark of a political campaign, even for Republicans. Campaign on that and you might as well run a 30 second ad where all you do is stab puppies to death.
You make a very good point. I used to be a soccer referee and used to get a fair bit of abuse from players, most of it light-hearted, but some guys were really mean, and if any foul was ever 50-50, I always called it on the mean bugger. Human nature.
Shhhhh, don't tell!!
Justin, Dick Cheney basically ran campaign ads where all he did was stab puppies to death, and it didn't stop the Bush-Cheney ticket from winning the 2004 election. Some people are just mean and enjoy voting for puppy-killers.
- Badtux the Realist Penguin
"I expect that I'm not the only person like that."
Dang it, there is a word for that , it is right on the tip of my tongue too.
Busted, the ORNERY Bastard.
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