March 30th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned members of Congress who he said “are attempting to discredit and marginalize the American people who vehemently opposed the government takeover of the nation’s health care system.”
Wilson said the attacks were “contrived” and designed to intimidate the political opposition. “The allegations members of Congress are using now are simply a part of a pre-conceived narrative to criminalize dissent against the expansion of government. Members of Congress will stop at nothing to politically marginalize the primary threat to them holding onto power, and that’s the American people.”
“This is right out of the Hugo Chavez-Fidel Castro playbook to take normal political dissent and to delegitimize it,” Wilson declared. “Congressional Democrats, having failed to persuade the American people to support the health care takeover, have dusted off that playbook and are once again attempting to portray their own constituents in the most extreme and provocative terms.”
“I really hope that the DNC will stop using these Marxist tactics, and accord individuals the right to legitimate dissent,” Wilson added.
Wilson pointed to Congressman James Clyburn’s claim that tea parties were a “kind of terrorism.” Others have alleged that activists shouted racial epithets at members of Congress on March 20th at a protest against the health care bill, as reported by the American Thinker. Others have attested that acts of vandalism were linked to the tea parties.
“This is not the first time they’ve done this,” Wilson added, pointing to portrayals of demonstrators at tea parties and town halls throughout 2009 by Congressional Democrats.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wrote an oped in USA Today calling opponents “un-American”. Congressman Steve Kagen called opponents “uncivilized,” and Congressman Baron Hill called them “political terrorists.”
Congressman Brian Baird called opponents of the legislation “Brown Shirts” and compared them to domestic terrorists, “Some of the rhetoric that we’re hearing is… eerily reminiscent of the kind of things that drove Tim McVeigh to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma.”
Wilson said the allegations being made against the tea party movement as a whole were “absurd.”
“Members of tea parties are just regular Americans who are fed up with the unprecedented expansion of government they have witnessed over the past three years,” Wilson said. “They are concerned mothers and fathers, young people and the elderly, who simply do not want to see their nation bankrupted and don’t want government in charge of health care.”
Wilson pointed to the bailouts of delinquent borrowers, Bear Stearns, AIG, GM, and Chrysler; the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program; the Federal Reserve more than doubling the money supply; the $787 billion “stimulus”; and the $2.5 trillion health care bill all as “primary motivators for the movement that seeks to restore government to its primary, limited functions under the Constitution by eliminating the entitlement state.”
Wilson suggested that the political aim of Congressional Democrats “was to keep their political base in line,” and he said the allegations were designed “to deflect attention from their votes in favor of ObamaCare and to play the role of victim.”
“That will not prevent their constituents from holding them politically accountable for how they voted,” Wilson added. “The American people are not stupid. No matter how much Congressional Democrats play the role of a victim, if this is their reelection strategy, it’s shameless, and it won’t work.”
“What Congressional Democrats are doing now is executing a pre-conceived, contrived narrative against the tea parties. But this is no way to portray constituents who have legitimately opposed the position their Congressman have taken on the health care takeover,” Wilson said, concluding, “There will be a political price to pay for attempting to marginalize the American people for expressing their First Amendment rights to dissent against government policies.”
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