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ace--i don't think the town hall meetings, and their slogans/tactics, came together around the columns of george will or bill kristol or whatever it is that karl rove does these days (the last one i don't know about for sure)...it's pretty obvious that the ways in which issues were framed came out of populist conservative media and that the primary, though not exclusive, drivers for this at the masscult level were people like limbaugh & beck and other zanies. there's little doubt that there's also bloggers who are important in here as well as other forms of collective mobilization brought to you by the usual conservative groups and their funders in the insurance industry (these days).
and it's entirely implausible, given the whacked out ways in which much of the public face of the town hall phenom has gone, that these folk just converged and happened to be saying the same things based on the state of affairs that obtained in congress at a particular moment.
there are of course people on the right with principled objections who are not part of the organized populist zaniness that we've been treated to as a public spectacle.
and not everyone on the right watches the talking heads.
but there's no way to go from there to any argument that therefore there's no influence.
it seems so obviously false, that kind of argument, that i really can't figure out why you'd head down this path and try to make the claim.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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