Garrison Keillor plays off the Tea Party name, saying most Americans prefer coffee to tea.  Though a board member of the San Antonio Tea Party, I too prefer coffee.  And though Mr. Keillor and I both understand the historical reference of the Tea Party name, he finds it rhetorically useful to ignore.

Mr. Keillor next invokes the almost incomprehensible human suffering from the Haitian earthquake, apparently trying to tar Tea Parties with responsibility for natural disasters.  Keillor’s prose is evocative.  But wrapping himself in the pathos is a polemical tool, an emotional appeal unrelated to the substance of his argument.

Keillor correctly notes that healthcare reform proposals are too murky to explain clearly, but he blames that on trying to attract Republican votes.  Obamacare did not rely on Republican votes, and the legislative contortions arose from attempts to draw in less ideologically committed among his own party, such a Ben “Sweepstakes” Nelson of Nebraska.

Keillor also correctly, albeit argumentatively, formulates the basic divide over Obamacare: whether health care should be a legally enforceable right.  He and the left wing say “yes.”  The San Antonio Tea Party believes rights remain as they were at our nation’s founding: not what the government might give you but protection from what the government might do to you.

In not one of the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights and nowhere else in the Constitution is there anything that the government must give you.  Everything is focused either on organizing and running the government or on liberties the government must respect.

The reason is simple.  Government creates nothing.  Whatever government possesses, it has taken from those subject to it.  To give a dollar to one person, government must first have taken the dollar from others.  For you to have a legally enforceable right to the dollar, you must have a legally enforceable claim on the fruit of others’ labor.  American history has a sordid episode when such claims existed: slavery.

Keillor tries to tie left-wing policy nostroms to Christian doctrine.  I am hardly a theologian, but I don’t recall anything about Christ having a economic policy or saying people have a right to look to the state for support.  If Christ demands a left-wing economic policy and left-wing economic policies are shown, as they have been, to impoverish people, where does that leave religion?  As to the implied relationship between Tea Parties and Pat Robertson, if Keillor won’t blame us for what comes out of Robertson’s mouth, we won’t blame him for what comes out of Jeneane Garofalo’s.

The headline on Keillor’s column says Tea Parties “should wake up and smell the coffee.”  After last Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts, perhaps Keillor himself has some smelling to do.  That a little-known Republican is replacing Ted Kennedy in the United States Senate testifies to overreaching by the left wing.  The people of Massachusetts did not like where they were being taken and screamed halt.  In Massachusetts.  The only state carried by George McGovern.  What does Keillor think will happen in states with more conservative leanings?  To quote another columnist, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post: “You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one.”

Back to the tea or coffee issue, Keillor may not be aware of the historical connection between the Boston Tea Party and the American preference for coffee.  Both stem from the British tax on tea.  Tea was initially preferred in America as it was in Britain, but Americans despised the British tax.  Switching to coffee became a way to express solidarity against unfair taxation.  No wonder so many Tea Partiers drink coffee.  If Mr. Keillor comes to town, I’ll buy him a cup.

Here are the links to the news stories about the event and some pictures.

http://www.kabb.com/news/   its under Health Care Reform Town Hall

http://www.mysa.com   look in the slideshows Charles Gonzalez health care town hall and Lamar Smith health care town hall

http://www.kens5.com/latestnews/stories/KENS20090824-lamarsmithtownhall.111b9bbab.html

http://www.ksat.com/video/20537133/index.html

http://sanantonioteaparty.org/event-pictures/?album=1&gallery=9

Today the Obama White House played a card from the Clinton deck, characterizing the massive resistance expressed at congressional townhall meetings across the country as the work of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Reader Martin Karo attended one such townhall this past Sunday in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, at which Rep. Patrick Murphy was savaged by a crowd of well over a hundred citizens, even openly jeered when he claimed he had read the thousand-page health care bill just as he reads every bill.

How did Karo find out about the townhall? He was the recipient of a robocall the day before, informing him about the meeting and inviting his attendance. Thinking Murphy’s database includes mostly Democrats, he is of the view that anyone who ascribes the crowd’s hostility to the work of the VRCW is delusional. Karo reports:

This past Sunday afternoon I attended a “citizen’s meeting” in the neighboring town (Morrisville) with my alleged Blue Dog Congressman, Patrick Murphy. I think they were expecting 20 or 30 people. More than a hundred showed up, and it’s fair to say Murphy ran into a buzz saw. I would say the “anti” forces outnumbered the “plan-friendly” voters ten to one. The crowd was by and large older; I was one of the younger people there, but I expect the youngest person was Murphy himself. The crowd was orderly (at least at first), respectfully dressed, and as I was to find out, very well informed as to what was going on.

At first, Murphy said he would speak to people individually, in the order they signed up on a sign-in sheet. You would have thought this would make everyone feel special, but it just made the crowd restive and angry. One silver-haired tall thin fellow in a red polo shirt commanded the room’s attention by starting to speak himself, in a loud voice, saying how disappointed he was in the format and the Congressman, that all the people in the room had questions about health care and they deserved to hear what the congressman had to say and the congressman needed to hear what they had to say.

An argument broke out between him and an obviously neurotic middle-aged woman (she had her head bent down most of the time and kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself) who said she did not want to talk about health care and besides the president’s plan was good for “the people”. A number of people retorted immediately, “What people?” “Not me!” “It’s a disaster!”

Murphy then stepped forward and said he would take questions on the health bill. He said he was a veteran (this drew applause) and he wanted what was best for the country. He said he was troubled by several aspects of the plan, but they were working to make it better, so that it would be affordable and would cover all the 47 million uninsured.

He claimed he had just read the bill, and wasn’t too familiar with it. But he then launched into describing aspects of the plan, without talking about what he would change. He had the misfortune to mention the words “single payer” and someone near me bellowed “we shouldn’t even be talking about single payer!”

One man spoke up and said he was retired and had had a quadruple bypass last year and also some stomach surgery, and asked whether he would be alive today under the government plan. Murphy said in a careful lawyerly answer that the man “would receive appropriate medical care” at which point someone retorted “that means you’d be dead!” and someone else called out “how do you know” (clearly to Murphy’s answer).

Murphy said he knows because he’d read the bill. He went on to say “I read every bill I vote on.” At that point jeering commenced, someone barked “that’s not true!” (ok, that was me), and someone else piped up that even Murphy’s office had said he had not read the stimulus bill or else he would not have voted for the bonuses for the executives.

Murphy tried to change the subject by citing statistics and launching into an explanation of how the bill was necessary due to soaring medical costs, at which someone else snorted “and you think the GOVERNMENT could fix that?” and a hefty fellow interjected “let the free market take care of that! We don’t need socialist medicine!”

Murphy responded that he didn’t want to take away anyone’s health care, and his goal was seeking “cost savings” by eliminating “waste and fraud.” He did riff on the evil greedy insurance companies and doctors committing fraud. The crowd seemed unconvinced. I spoke up and said waste and fraud had been government problems since Abraham Lincoln’s day, the government had never been able to eliminate it, and in any event the amount of waste and fraud could not possibly amount to more than five percent of health care’s costs even by the government’s own figures, so how could Murphy claim that better controls would pay for anything?

Murphy reiterated that there was a lot of waste and fraud but they were looking at other revenue enhancements, like taxing “gold plated” plans. I snapped back “the health insurance industry after-tax profits amount to 3 percent of revenue. Why do you keep blaming them?” At which point the neurotic lady started shouting at me that we all were mean and hostile and the congressman was doing a great job and we should just let him help us because that’s what he wanted to do.

Someone at the back of the room called out “this won’t help us! Leave our health care alone!” Murphy asked everyone to cool down and “be respectful, this is America,” and tried to interject that they were not going to take away anyone’s health insurance, but that dog was clearly not hunting.

The inevitable question was asked, whether Murphy would subject his own family to the plan; Murphy equivocated for a while, saying that Congress already had a health plan and the president had said that everyone could keep his or her health care, but when the crowd started murmuring loudly to that Murphy said he would put his family into the government health care plan.

I had had about all the dissembling I could take for one day, so I left. Besides, Murphy looked like he was in plenty enough trouble as it was.

There were four interesting things about the meeting. One, there is obvious interest and hostility stirred up by the plan. The old folks are mad. This isn’t going away. Two, Murphy felt the need to go rather quickly to mention his military service, which brought applause from the crowd. But you know what they say about patriotism and scoundrels.

Three, perhaps most interesting, Murphy never mentioned Obama by name and barely referred to the president at all. Clearly, he knows the big O man is not popular and is trying to sell the plan while not embracing the man. Four, the popular thing would have been to say “this bill is unacceptable as is and I will work hard to change it,” but that’s not what he said. He is indeed trying to sell the plan.

That tells me that Nancy et al. have been twisting arms hard. It doesn’t mean they will succeed – I’m sure Murphy cares deeply about being re-elected, and the afternoon’s meeting could not have made him feel good about his prospects if he continues on this path – but it shows more pressure on the “Blue Dogs” is very necessary.