Thursday, September 03, 2009

The University of Astroturf: FreedomWorks "Educates" the Tea-Baggers

From: FreedomWorks VP Refuses To Try To ‘Calm Down’ Angry Protesters At Health Care Town Hall Meetings (Updated)
By Ben Armbruster
thinkprogress.org
Aug 7th, 2009

FreedomWorks, an industry-backed right-wing group led by former GOP congressman Dick Armey, has been heavily engaged in organizing conservatives to ambush Democratic members of Congress supporting health care reform at town halls across the country during the August recess. Its “astroturf” campaign is designed to present the appearance of wide-spread public discontent with health care reform, but the reality is that the town halls have become forums for disruption, extremism and even violence.

Last night on MSNBC, FreedomWorks Vice President Max Pappas boasted about flooding congresspeople’s town hall meetings and “blowing them apart.” “We have about 400,000 on-line members who we can contact with an e-mail database that we have, send them information about when the town halls are, give them briefings on the health care reform plans,” he said.

Pappas was on C-SPAN this morning, and a Republican veteran called in and asked Pappas to “to tell these people to wrap it down.” “We Republicans already have the image of being owned by corporate America. Now we’re getting the image of being owned by wild red-neck America,” the caller complained. ...

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/07/freedomworks-cspan/