At Rep. Frank Pallone's Town hall recently in New Jersey, 8/26/09, the environment had become so politically toxic that some people in the crowd went out there way to heckle a lady in a wheel chair. It's like we never had an election, and the constant challenging of Obama's legitimacy is disturbing to say the least.

From NJ.com,

I never thought I’d see a crowd of people heckle and boo a handicapped woman in a wheelchair. I never thought I’d be called a communist and a shill for big business – both in the same ten minutes.

But that was before the debate over federal health care reform came to my hometown, last night, at a town hall meeting on federal health care reform with Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th District).

I kind of wish it hadn’t. There was no discussion, no one listened to anyone. Pallone could not open his mouth before being jeered and heckled. Opponents of the health care legislation sponsored by Pallone grew so rabid they at one point began booing people who were asking Pallone NOT to vote for the bill. When one opponent of the bill began her comments by quoting Margaret Mead, she was booed loudly. She was challenging Pallone and was clearly opposed to the bill. But I guess the crowd heard her mention Margaret Mead and assumed, if they were quoting an intellectual, it must be a liberal talking. So they bood her almost out of the joint.

This Know-Nothing branch of the GOP that has taken over their party, the Glenn Beck-Michelle Malkin, Palin/Huckabee/Romney anti-intellectual faction, a reaction to the NeoCons, only hastens the GOPs demographic demise in an age where most under 50 have the technical savvy to fact check nonsense. The target of the Know-Nothings is to pick the pockets of the 11% of Americans who are over 65, they really don't care or realize that 11% and the 30% total that is their legion, can't form a majority, and when Independents, single women, and all the other groups that were up for grabs in 2000 have run far away from the crazy screamers who think Obama was born in Africa and planted in Hawaii only to usurp the government and implement both Communism and Fascism simultaneously. They might as well say Obama is a vampire and a were-wolf and bat boy, and Satan. It's just nonsense that makes the sharps at the top of the GOP pyramid squirm and try very hard to wiggly their way into the Democratic Party.

I understand the problem the GOP has. Their name brand is mud because they couldn't execute they were incompetent and corrupt for fifteen years in the Congress and eight in the White House. They didn't leave the country better then they found it, and the same problems we had with access to health in 2000, prevail. Like public education, a highway system, and clean water, you can't be a civilized society without it, when you can do it and you choose not to. The idea was to attack Obama as anti-libertarian at once pacifying the GOP base and pairing off liberal supporters, while obstructing and dragging their feet when it comes to any proposals from the President attempting to appeal to Hillary voters, but it's just ended up looking like the worst John Birch-Lyndon Larouche meeting ever. The only way the GOP can compete is to find someone as charismatic and intelligent as Obama, Obama would have to make 4-5 W level mistakes, and the GOP has got to start proposing alternative proactive solutions to the prevailing problems of the day, changing the subject isn't enough, talking about how we talk about the problem isn't enough, calling Obama hitler or secret satan, sure the hell isn't close to being enough. The GOP has to be honest with themselves and they will discover that they aren't keeping up with demographic realties and the diversity of the American electorate, and their underlying problem is that the more they reach out to the new voters they need the more they alienate their base which they also need. The GOP spent a ton of political capital in the 2000s, and it will take a brand, new candidate with a platform that can pacify their base and attract new voters without being tricky.

Can there be any room for a centrist at a health care reform town hall meeting

The discourse in this country is severely damaged in large part because a third of the electorate gets their news from Planet News Corp. and talk radio, and nowhere else, and the rest of us have to pretend that they haven't been conned out of their interests. In the end, and this is key, the know-nothings must not win. Just like they shouldn't win in denying global warming, nor should they win the intelligent design as science debate, we must not reward minority opinions over majority opinions especially when their ideas lack merit or validity. So if we lose the 35% of the electorate that will never vote for Obama or a Democrat, we can't, because they've already been lost, that damages our outreach to persuadables and it really damages the trust of the 52% of the electorate that voted for us. We shouldn't forget that Obama won states that no Democrat has won in years like North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, this was a huge victory and equivocating to pacify the insatiable would be the worst possible move, because you lose ground all around. The key is to make the legislation effective, and make it kick in as fast as possible such that the benefits are felt during the 2010 Congressional elections. You can't campaign for two years on health care, design a bill over the course of eight months, with a huge majority, and a massive electoral victory and then not cross the goal line. We'll always be unpopular with some of the people, but that shouldn't hurt the majority who want and need reform and that which they voted for. The only poll that matters is the election.

Matt Bai: "The typical anti-Obama activist tends to be white, male and -- perhaps most significant -- advanced in age. A poll conducted earlier this month by CNN and Opinion Research showed a rather stark age divide when it came to health care: 57 percent of voters under 50 said they favored the outlines of a Democratic plan, but that number was a full 20 points lower among voters over 65. In three Pew Research Center polls going back to April, senior citizens consistently gave Obama's job performance lower approval ratings than did than any other age group."

65+=11% of US Population. Why should the misconceptions of a severe minority effect the interests and wishes of the vast majority? The Senate Health Bill can and should be passed via reconciliation in order to preserve the quality of the legislation, that the GOP members of the Senate Finance won't negotiate in good faith under any circumstances, is a plain fact.