Potemkin town halls
The Washington Times editorializes about the staged "Town Hall" meeting in Portsmouth, NH. [twitter]
President Obama should be charged with false advertising for calling yesterday's Portsmouth, N.H., event a "town-hall meeting." It was a staged, partisan campaign rally.
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In the 18th century, Russian Field Marshall Grigory Potemkin constructed elaborate villages to impress Empress Catherine II with the territory he had conquered. The villages were fake, comprised of nothing more than fancy facades on the front of empty shells. In today's health care debate, a chanting crowd of cherry-picked supporters is the Potemkin-village version of a town-hall meeting. Maybe some day the president will summon the courage to engage in a real discussion with a more representative sample of Americans.