As has been documented before, the Republican party and astroturf lobbying groups have been encouraging people to disrupt townhall meetings of Democratic members of Congress. These tea party activists are part of the paranoid, far right wing base of the party and have been using some questionable tactics. Tactics like shouting down all questions, loudly interrupting, name-calling and in some cases, physical intimidation. Are these tactics starting to turn violent?
The number of death threats to Obama has increased so much that the Secret Service has requested double the number of agents. He’s reported to get 30 death threats per day.
North Carolina Democratic Representative Brad Miller has received death threats:
Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) will not be hosting any town hall events this August — instead, he’s making himself available to constituents for one-on-one meetings about health care reform — and at least part of the reason is this: His offices have received threatening phone calls, including at least one direct threat against his life.
“We had no town hall events scheduled for the August recess anyway, but in light of everything that’s happened — we have received a threatening phone call in the D.C. office, there have been calls to the Raleigh office,” said Miller communications director LuAnn Canipe, in an interview with TPM. The threatening call in question happened earlier this week.
“The call to the D.C. office was, ‘Miller could lose his life over this,'” said Canipe. “Our staffer took it so seriously, he confirmed what the guy was saying. He said, ‘Sir is that a threat?’ and at that time our staffer was getting the phone number off caller ID and turning it over to the Capitol Police.”
An unnamed Democratic member of Congress has also been reported to have been physically assaulted:
As lobbyist-run groups encourage conservative activists to “rattle” members of Congress at local town hall events, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the president of the freshman Democratic class has revealed that “at least one freshman Democrat” has already been “physically assaulted at a local event.” Connolly warned that conservative groups had taken things to a “dangerous level“:
I hope we can stop the violence in time, before there are more serious consequences.