Understanding Angry Groups: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Their Motivations and Effects on Society by Cloninger Susan C.; Leibo Steven A.; Leibo Steven A

Author:Cloninger, Susan C.; Leibo, Steven A.; Leibo, Steven A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, LLC

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Institutionalization of Political Anger: The Case of the Affordable Care Act

Terry Weiner

During the August recess of Congress in 2009, legislators came home to meet with constituents, as they often do, in town-hall-type settings. These members of Congress expected to be asked about a range of topics; however, one topic seemed to dominate most of these meetings—the Affordable Care Act (ACA; referred to derogatorily as “Obamacare”). Members were certainly expecting questions on this topic and were prepared to handle them. What they experienced, though, was far from the usual give-and-take of a question-and-answer session with constituents. Instead, it was more like an ambush by citizens who had apparently been encouraged by radio talk-show hosts and other conservative grass roots organizations to show up at these meetings and demonstrate their opposition to the president’s health care plan. Indeed, at some of these meetings, there were fistfights, arrests, and even some hospitalizations (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.). Most of the Congress members ambushed were Democrats, but Republicans were not spared, either. A taste of what happened can be garnered from the two descriptions below:

At the beginning of a rowdy forum hosted by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., Mike Sola pushed his wheelchair-bound son up to the podium where Dingell stood and began to yell, “I’m his father and I want to talk to you face to face.” Dingell was only accepting questions written in advance on notecards. Sola went on to loudly claim that Obama’s health care plan would provide “no care whatsoever” to his son, who has cerebral palsy. “You’ve ordered a death sentence to this young man,” he shouts before being escorted out of the room by police.

Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., struggled to keep a health care town hall meeting in Tampa under control as protesters crowded the room and the struggle turned physical. Hundreds of people showed up for the meeting to protest Obama’s plan and many were not allowed into the room. That didn’t stop them from banging on the door and drowning out the congresswoman’s remarks with shouts of “You work for us” and “Tyranny.” (Shanahan, 2013)

To many “policy wonks” who follow the history of public policy and its progress from ideas to legislation, this reaction was difficult to understand. To be sure, the legislation that President Obama was proposing was filled with compromises and had many flaws that would trouble legislators on both sides of the aisle. Indeed, many health care experts had raised some concerns, particularly about the likely success of holding health care costs down with the large expansion of coverage. But, and even more importantly, the president’s plan had its origins in conservative think tanks and Republican alternatives to the ill-fated Clinton plan in the mid-1990s (ProCon.org, 2012). Ironically, the first real consideration of an individual mandate for health care came out of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, in 1989 (Krugman, 2011). The Heritage Foundation set up “Heritage Action,” a political action wing of the Foundation to encourage these very protests described earlier.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.