Give ’em hell

Who doesn’t want to give Bob Goodlatte hell on health-care reform? Especially after seeing the organized shenanigans being played out at town-hall meetings being held by Democratic congressmen and senators across the country.

The ‘Pubs are getting their pound of flesh, I want mine, right?

Sorry. It’s not going to happen.

Goodlatte indicated at an invitation-only event for business leaders that he held in Staunton on Monday that he won’t be doing any in-person town-hall meetings until the fall, though he will be holding what are called tele-town-hall meetings with constituents in the next week or so.

Not that a tele-town-hall meeting is all that much to get all worked up about. For starters, you have to wonder if they’re going to be invitation-only, too, given that if you look at the Goodlatte official congressional website there’s nothing listed that looks like a tele-town-hall meeting, so whether we’re going to be notified when they’re set up and also how we could then log in and participate is something that is at question.

And even if we can get in a tele-town-hall setting, you know, is there any value to that kind of thing? I’ve listened in on other tele-town-halls in the past, and all they were was the person who was the host pontificating for 15 or 20 minutes about whatever he wanted to talk about, then taking questions from a preselected few as a sort of veiled pretext to being able to pontificate a bit more.

Interesting, isn’t it, how circle-the-wagons the ‘Pubs are being on this, eh? They’re besieging Democrats when they do the right thing and set up forums seeking feedback from their constituents, yet they’re not as keen on opening themselves up to the same kind of feedback likely because they know that Democrats who have been watching the news the past few nights are going to respond in kind.

With this in mind, I’m inclined to back the effort being initiated by MoveOn.org to get health-care-reform backers to visit the local offices of closed-eared congressmen like Goodlatte to let their position be known that way.

More information on the MoveOn.org effort is available here – http://my.barackobama.com/OfficeVisit.

Give ’em hell.

 

– Column by Chris Graham