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Update: More GOP Lawmakers Avoiding Town Halls; Anger for Those Who Do Show

-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

Go away, cmn32480. You are not wanted here. Go vandalize someone else's efforts.

Merge with: More Than 200 Republicans in Congress Are Skipping February Town Halls with Constituents [soylentnews.org]
and Update: 7 Heated Town Halls: Voters Are Turning on GOP Senators [soylentnews.org]

from the another-day,-another-report-on-the-death-of-democracy dept.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, Massachusetts reports [gazettenet.com]

In Denver this week, the activists targeted Republican Sen. Cory Gardner--denouncing him as inaccessible and beaming a picture of him fashioned into a "Missing" poster to a wall of the Denver Art Museum while protesting Trump's plans to boost energy production on public lands.

[...]Gardner defeated a Democrat in 2010, and used impromptu town hall meetings heavily attended by tea party members in his campaign to rail against Obama's Affordable Care Act and incumbent congressional representatives he labeled as out of touch with voters.

Now an incumbent who doesn't face re-election until 2020, Gardner has no town halls scheduled and was met Wednesday [February 22] at an agricultural forum in Denver by protesters yelling "We want a town hall!"

[...]In Montana, Republican Sen. Steve Daines got waylaid with boos and jeers from hundreds of protesters just for rescheduling an appearance before state lawmakers in Helena from Tuesday to Wednesday.

[...]About 200 protesters clamored Wednesday outside a Carson City, Nevada, casino where Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Mark Amodei, both Republicans, spoke behind closed doors in a session for business leaders--and ended getting booed and heckled inside the private luncheon.

[...]In Nebraska, Republican Rep. Don Bacon said in an interview that he plans no town meetings for now because he sees no point in them turning into forums for people who want to disrupt the events.

[...]Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert announced he opted for telephone town halls because groups from what he called "violent strains of the leftist ideology...are preying on public town halls to wreak havoc and threaten public safety".

More Than 200 Republicans in Congress Are Skipping February Town Halls with Constituents

-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the representitive-government-in-decline dept.

VICE News reports [vice.com]

Members of Congress are set to return to their districts this weekend for their first weeklong recess since Donald Trump's inauguration. Heading home during legislative breaks is nothing new, but this year most Republicans are foregoing a hallowed recess tradition: holding in-person town halls where lawmakers take questions from constituents in a high school gym, local restaurant, or college classroom.

After outpourings of rage at some early town halls--including crowds at an event near Salt Lake City yelling "Do your job!" at Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee--many Republicans are ducking in-person events altogether. Instead they're opting for more controlled Facebook Live or "tele-town halls," where questions can be screened by press secretaries and followups are limited--as are the chances of becoming the next viral meme of the Left.

For the first two months of the new Congress, the 292 Republicans have scheduled just 88 in-person town hall events--and 35 of those sessions are for Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, according to a tabulation conducted by Legistorm [legistorm.com]. In the first two months of the previous Congress in 2015, by contrast, Republicans held 222 in-person town hall events.

[...]"What happens in politics is that over time, you can get increasingly insulated from people that have a strongly held point of view that's different [from yours]", [said Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina]. Sessions like tele-town halls aren't a good substitute, he said, because "oftentimes they will screen their calls and those forums can be manipulated".

Republicans who get [verbally] roughed up at their town halls have taken to dismissing the attendees as professional organizers. [...] While there is no evidence of paid protesters attending town halls, it is true that Democratic activists have been organizing to manufacture viral moments of confrontation like the tea party movement did in the summer of 2009.

[...]One strategy for activists has been to host their own town halls and invite their representatives to attend. [...] Another method has been to confront senators and representative in public places and demand they hold a town hall.

Update: 7 Heated Town Halls: Voters Are Turning on GOP Senators

-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

Merge with: More Than 200 Republicans in Congress Are Skipping February Town Halls with Constituents [soylentnews.org]

from the disappointed-constituents dept.

AlterNet reports [alternet.org]

Republican members of Congress--at least, those who deigned to show up--faced angry constituents in district town hall meetings across the country [February 21]. Many of the meetings drew overflow crowds filled with local residents who turned out specifically to voice anger over GOP threats to Obamacare. [...]

1. In his home state of Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was roasted by a woman voter who questioned him on coal jobs and the Obamacare repeal.

2. Iowa's Chuck Grassley [...]

3. In Colorado, constituents held an "in absentia town hall" for legislators who were no-shows. [...]

4. Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey avoided his constituents altogether, but they went ahead with a town hall anyway. It featured an empty suit in Toomey's place, to which constituents directed their questions.

5. [...]Joni Ernst [...] cravenly ducked out of a meeting with constituents from Maquoketa, Iowa after just 45 minutes. [...]

6. Dave Brat of Virginia [...]

7. [...]Steve Womack [of Arkansas] [...]

In 2014, Tea Party-backed Dave Brat defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Virginia Republican primary, claiming that Cantor wasn't Conservative enough.

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