Spring is finally here. I will be pruning rose bushes and grapevines on Saturday, weather permitting. Thankfully, I don't have to mow the lawn yet. Do you know who else never has to mow a lawn? People who use astroturf. And if I am any judge of Utah politics and Democrats, I highly suspect that astroturf was in plentiful supply this week at a Salt Lake City town hall meeting hosted by Republican Reps. Celeste Maloy and Mike Kennedy.
Actually, I do consider myself a judge of Utah politics and Democrats. I've lived in Utah most of my life and was a solid Democrat until my 40s. I know of what I speak.
Local TV station KUTV reported on the town hall, which Maloy and Kennedy were advised not to hold specifically because angry protestors would be out in force to throw tantrums. The station breathlessly noted that the meeting "turned chaotic" in the face of a "hostile crowd."
Some excerpts:
It was sometimes hard to hear what the answers were partly because of the amount of yelling from the crowd. Even before the meeting started, people like Lenore Rudolph, who says she's a republican delegate, sat right in the front to make sure they were seen. "We've become lawless,” she said while holding a sign of Elon Musk kicking that statue of liberty off Trump Tower.
Kathy Dudley said she showed up because she wanted to see what her representatives are representing. "I have a real problem with the whole doge thing,” Dudley told KUTV.
Almost immediately, the meeting got rowdy.
"If you want me to answer questions, I’ll answer questions; if you want to yell, you can yell. But we can't do both at the same time,” Congresswoman Maloy told the crowd. “We're going to do both at the same time,” one person in the crowd yelled back.
Salt Lake County Republican Chair Mike Carey was there, and he tweeted out "it's easy to see why the democratic party has a record low approval rating based on the juvenile antics of most in the room."
(For the record, I left the original spelling and grammar intact to illustrate the current state of the MSM.)
So it got heated that night and I guess "chaotic." But was it an upswelling of the people? I'm not convinced.
First, anyone who does not live in the Beehive State may be under the impression that everyone votes Republican and is related to the Osmond Brothers.
Nope.
Yes, there are a lot of Osmonds around here, but Salt Lake City is by no means a GOP stronghold. It's about as blue a city as they come. Don't let the Temple and Tabernacle fool you. You would likely have to travel to the coasts (or at least Colorado) to find a city more progressive than Salt Lake.
Second, I have no doubt that a cadre of Democrats decided to show up to make life miserable for Maloy and Kennedy. The only thing Democrats like more than being inflammatory, indignant, and borderline violent is letting people see them in that state. It's been a while since I was a donkey, but I would bet that there is now a plank in the party platform that mandates that members never miss a chance to throw a fit in public.
Third, it is a safe bet that there were more than a few pseudo-Republicans in the crowd. My guess is that the woman with the sign was one. Democrats love signs and screaming. Genuine Republicans, not so much. Besides, I've seen it before.
Back when I lived in oil and gas country, if a company wanted to drill or do any kind of project on public lands, public meetings took place. If you cover enough of those for the news, you know who the locals are on both sides of the issue who show up for those meetings. One day, brand-new faces started appearing to protest the projects, and they all looked like they had been in cryogenic suspension since Woodstock or had wandered away from a revival of "Hair," only less well-groomed. They, of course, were paid protestors. I hope they spent some of that money on soap.
At the last state nominating convention I attended, there was a sizable group of "Republicans" who were, in reality, Democrats, who had wormed their way into positions as precinct chairs and state delegates. Their only purpose was to disrupt the convention in order to ultimately unseat Mike Lee. They even bragged about it beforehand on social media. A complete account of that day is available here.
There may be a few Romney enthusiasts and Lincoln Project wannabes among the Utah GOP, but not many. One point of the rhetoric, antics, and violence is to gaslight you and the rest of the nation into believing this is a grassroots movement of millions of right-thinking people. The other is to scare you into sitting down and shutting up.
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