Shut up and Scroll

Sen. Marco Rubio won’t participate in town hall meetings because he says political activists will crash them to create a media spectacle of people who “heckle and scream at me in front of cameras.”

“They are not town halls anymore,” the Florida Republican told CBS4-Miami’s Jim DeFede on Sunday. “What these groups really want is for me to schedule a public forum, they then organize three, four, five, six hundred liberal activists in the two counties or wherever I am in the state.”

Citing protesting tips published by the new Indivisible movement, Rubio told the station that activists are instructed to go to town halls early and “take up all the front seats. They spread themselves out. They ask questions. They all cheer when the questions are asked. They are instructed to boo no matter what answer I give. They are instructed to interrupt me if I go too long and start chanting things. Then, at the end, they are also told not to give up their microphone when they ask questions. It’s all in writing in this Indivisible document.”

While Rubio has avoided town halls, fellow Republicans in Florida and around the nation have shown up at public forums and taken the heat. Some Republicans have refused, with Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert invoking the 2011 shooting of former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, a Democrat.

“I was shot on a Saturday morning. By Monday morning my offices were open to the public,” Giffords said on Twitter. “To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls.”

She wasn’t trying to pull a Rachel Dole Juice, but basically saying, if I was actually someone who wore the scarf for religious reasons that would have been 100x scarier.

I saw the headline expecting to start clowning her, but she wasn’t being extra… at least not this time.

Citizens shouldn’t be treated like enemies of the state, on behalf of corporations.