US Health Care Debate Gets Ugly

The debate on government run health care in the US is getting decidedly ugly. Thousands of ordinary Americans are turning out to town hall meetings to tell their representatives that they are very worried about losing whet they have, about higher taxes, about loss of freedom of choice.

Rather than listening carefully, Democrat organizers have turned nasty. Protesters have been accused of being "astroturfers" and Nazis. And now they are getting roughed up by union goons.

The Wall Street Journal summarizes and has advice for the Democrats.

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.

Update: A first-person account from the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting where union goons went looking for heads to bust — and found one.

Update 2: Jim Treacher Tweets: "If Kenneth Gladney was an Obama supporter, right now he'd be more famous than Rodney King."