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NO IGNORING PROTESTS: ?President Obama will return from his island idyll to a political landscape c?

By Glenn Reynolds

NO IGNORING PROTESTS: “President Obama will return from his island idyll to a political landscape completely remade. He still will be greeted by swooning crowds and enthusiastic cheers. But his signature domestic policy is weakened, the result of a resurgent Republican Party that only months ago was on life support. The irony here is that the Republicans played little role in their recovery, and are instead the innocent and passive beneficiaries of a grassroots (and radio-inspired) insurgency that, if they examine it carefully, may yet bite them as fiercely as it has bitten the president and his congressional allies.” Yes, those who think the Tea Party crowds are inherently pro-Republican are missing something.

UPDATE: More from the Milk Carton files. Plus, from the comments, a scathing remark on the “tele-townhall” failures:

My wife signed up to participate. We got a reminder call on Saturday to be by the phone 7 pm on Sunday. The phone rang a minute before 7, my wife answered the call, got put on hold for about 15 minutes. Then Sen. Klobuchar got on and after about 4 minutes of listening, the line went dead, she was dropped.

That led to a rather scathing email back to Senator Klobuchar.

When calling in to complain this morning, my wife could hear other lines being answered in the background apologizing for the technical difficulties, that it wasn’t their fault.

Is this how government run healthcare is going to be like? Wait, wait, hello, click, we’re sorry, it’s not our fault.

Indeed. Plus, a report from the Russ Carnahan Recess Rally.

And here’s a report on the Heath Shuler Recess Rally. “The meeting was part of a series of ‘Recess Rallys’ being held nationwide by Tea Party groups in opposition to the current health care reform legislation. ‘He (Shuler) and a lot of other congressmen held town hall meetings over the telephone and that really isn’t a town hall meeting,’ said Gary Shoemaker, who helped organize the event. ‘We wanted to have the real thing.’”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Failure Accompli: The Excuse-Making Starts.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on August 24, 2009 (boomark / email).