Health care debate: Too hot?

Do the rowdy protest 'mobs' at Democratic town halls mean health-care reform is in danger, or the congressmen?

Things are getting ugly in the health-care reform debate, said Joan Walsh in Salon. At town hall meetings nationwide, angry “mobs” of “frothing right-wingers” are trying to create “town hells,” shouting down Democratic lawmakers, and worse—one's been hanged in effigy, another received death threats, and a third is under police escort. This isn’t “populism,” it’s a growing “hysteria fed by lies peddled by GOP leaders and corporate interests.”

“There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly,” said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. But President Obama and his “desperate” Democrats are only making “a hot situation hotter.” They’re the ones who’ve bungled health-care reform by pushing a “huge new entitlement,” yet their “stunningly crude and aggressive” response to the legitimate, palpable fear of “concerned citizens” is to mock and menace them.

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