Anti-Reform Group Takes Credit For Disrupting Town Hall Rallies

By GottaLaff

In a post back in May, I wrote about David Plouffe's warning about impending SwiftBoat attacks by Rick Scott's gang of thugs. Then, last month, I posted about the developing Rick Scott corporate grassrootery.

Now we see that Hooligan Ricky is going public, taking a bow for interfering with democracy via intimidation:

Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, the operation that’s running a national campaign against a public health care option, is now publicly taking credit for helping gin up the sometimes-rowdy outbursts targeting House Dems at town hall meetings around the country.

CPR is the group headed by controversial former hospitals exec Rick Scott that’s spending millions on ads attacking reform in all sorts of lurid ways, a campaign that’s being handled by the same P.R. mavens behind the Swift Boat Vets.

In response to my questions, a spokesman for the group confirmed that it has undertaken a concerted effort to get people out to the town hall meetings to protest reform. The spokesperson, Brian Burgess, confirmed that CPR is emailing out “town hall alert” flyers, and schedules of town hall meetings, to its mailing list. [...]

CPR spokesman Burgess confirmed that the group had set up a list serv designed to reach out to “third party groups” involved in the health care fight, including the Tea Party activists. And in a statement emailed to me, Scott, who was ousted as a health-care exec amid a 1990s fraud probe, took credit for the town hall showings. [...]

[H]e claimed outrage was spontaneous.

Similarly, America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, the insurance industry group, has stationed employees in 30 states to track local town hall events.

Be proud, Rick. Take those bows. You may ending up helping our side more than you know.

Rachel, from last night's show:

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