‘Brown Shirt Tactics’
For fear of being ‘ambushed’ by Republican “lynch-mobs,” Democratic Congressman Brian Baird (WA-3) said he refuses to hold in-person town hall meetings over the summer’s month-long Congressional recess.
Citing the G.O.P.’s “Brown Shirt tactics” as the impetus for his decision, Baird told the Columbian he will instead host a telephone town hall, thereby lessening the ability for “extremists”—which ostensibly is anyone expressing legitimate dissent—to “shout and make YouTube videos.”
Baird’s aggressive, albeit obtuse, rhetoric is the newest installment in the Republican and Democratic parties’ debate as to the nature of the protesters – organic reactions versus highly-orchestrated mobs of extremists.
While Baird’s patently offensive Nazi SA comparison is indeed more aggressive than the DNC’s portrayal of protesters as mentally unstable conspiracy theorists bent on proving Obama’s Kenyan birth, the sentiment is not wholly unlike the opinions expressed by Lanny Davis and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker Pelosi categorically rejected the notion that conservatives could oppose the President’s domestic agenda on legitimate grounds and maintained that critics of Obama’s health care overhaul were brandishing “swastikas and symbols like that” at town hall meetings.
Echoing Pelosi’s ridiculous opinion, Davis said in a posting on Politico’s Arena the Republican “shout-downs” were a classic example of “fascist tactics” and were a detriment to civil debate.
A greater detriment to civil debate, as it turns out, is the decision to not engage in one, like the case of Congressman Baird.
Community organizing is only acceptable as a singular means to effect liberal change. Critics of Obama’s “Great Society,” however, are pitch-fork toting, NASCAR loving, civil debate hating, Nazis.
In the absence of a public town hall, Baird’s pitch-fork toting, NASCAR loving, civil debate hating, Nazi constituents can reach the Congressman’s D.C. office by phone at (202) 225-3536.

[...] Cross-posted at Skepticians.com. [...]
Baird is my rep and I am so outrage that he will not hold any in person town hall meetings. How the heck does he expect to represent us, if he won’t listen to our concerns or answer any questions.
I have emailed, faxed, and called him almost daily and all I get is a form letter thanking me for contacting him.
This fear of being “ambushed” is ridiculous – it is only an excuse to not meet face to face with their constitutes and answer real questions about the dangers ObamaCare will cause to our economy and our freedoms. It is an attempt to stifle public debate about the growing concerns of this health care issue.
I plan to continue to contact him & I hope that since he won’t meet with us and discuss our concerns – that Washingtonians wake up and do not re-elect him again.
[...] care protests I’d appear more authentic. Then I could really pull off using the “Brown Shirt tactics” being used by “extremists” to prevent Rep. Brian Baird of Washington from [...]
“I thought that Nancy Pelosi might have made a slip of the tongue when she dishonestly and disingenuously said that townhall-protesters are ‘carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare,’” – John McCormack, Weekly Standard.
“They aren’t carrying swastikas, either,” – The DC Examiner.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e20120a4d27a86970b-popup
How is that opinion and not fact James Richardson?
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/22/video-marine-goes-nuclear-on-democrat-over-obamacare/