Town Halls Actually a Cover for Republican Self-Help Meetings

John McCain’s town hall meeting in Sun City, Arizona, which was broadcast live Tuesday morning on CNN, was a surprising change from those that have been receiving the most air time as of late. Unlike town halls hosted by Democratic legislators, I was refreshed to see that there were no strung out right-wing extremists comparing Obama’s proposals to Nazi policies (although one would think that they would find those attractive), there were no screaming veterans, nor were there any sassy fifth-year seniors from the University of Colorado at Boulder challenging the President to an Oxford-style debate. However, my relief quickly turned to horror as I realized the truth of the situation: John McCain was standing in a church with a cadre of the elderly seated behind him in the choir section, and an even larger mob of seniors arrayed in front of him in the church’s seating. I could count the number of minorities in the audience on one hand, and the only young people present appeared to be McCain’s designated microphone caddy, a smiling Republican goon content to be a foot soldier for the conservative movement, and a wandering photographer.

The tone of the meeting was calm, and the only “Democrat” I saw speak was in fact a traitor that had lost it somewhere during the heavy binging of the Bush years and voted McCain. For the most part, the questions revolved around how McCain would help to achieve x Republican Party task or defeat y Obama proposal. He was questioned on his “yes” vote for the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, but he fielded it, like any good old man, with a story. When one woman, who was clearly a Republican diehard, declared that Obama’s spending was unconstitutional and followed with a question as to whether or not Obama realized that our country had a constitution, McCain halfheartedly muttered about his certainty that Obama was aware of the nation’s foremost legal document. The response from the class of 1938? Loud booing. Real mature.

As I watched the event progress, it became clear to me that these Republicans did not really have questions for Senator McCain, they had pleas for assurance, assurance that their worst fears would not be realized and that the State would not possibly be allowed to do anything beneficial for American society. My suspicions were confirmed when one woman worriedly told the Senator that if Obama were to pass his health care reform package in the way that he would like to, it would spell the end of the Republican Party’s ability to stop him on anything else. These people had not inched their way to the meeting for the purposes of eliciting information, but to help them get more sleep at night. No matter how many times the media declares that the White House and Congress are going to give up on the public option or that health care reform is unlikely to pass, the fact remains that the Democrats have huge majorities in both the House and the Senate, and can ram through any bill they want to, provided they can assuage any concerns of just a few of their more conservative fellow party members. Watching the meeting, I could see the desperation thick in the air, and I became only more convinced that our country will finally take the great leap that the other industrialized nations took more than a half-century ago. So Republicans, I’m sorry: health care will pass before the year is out, and it will include a public option. If you think they help, keep going to the town halls. It sure makes for entertaining early morning television.