No Town Halls For You!
Durbin only holding private meetings
By STEVE RHODES
Updated 9:45 AM CST, Fri, Aug 14, 2009
Dick Durbin, you spoilsport.
The state's senior U.S. senator may (or may not) have made a wise decision to forego hosting health care town halls in his home state, but in any case he's denying us of a spectacle we deserve.
After all, who isn't dying to see how a relatively close, personal friend of the president (and the No. 2 man in the Senate as Harry Reid's assistant majority leader) would handle the (planted or not) mobs that would turn out to shout him down?
Some of those mobs may even be made up of liberals, now that Durbin has backed away from the public option portion of a health care reform bill that some leading Democrats say is worthless without it.
Given the blueness of Illinois, Durbin would likely be pelted from both sides. What fun!
But there's a more serious dimension to Durbin's decision: Is he doing his constituents a disservice?
He's appears to have alredy lost one vote over the matter.
"I am sorry that I ever voted for you," T. Morgan comments at the State Journal-Register. "You owe me and every other voter out there a town hall; I supported you every time your name has appeared on the ballot, but that will not happen again."
And Morgan's the least vitriolic of the dissenters.
Durbin seems to claim he doesn't need a town hall to connect with voters on this topic.
“I am prepared to answer any honest question from anyone in this state about this issue," Durbin says.
Okay. What's your number?
Oh, here it is: (312) 353-4952.
I'll pass it on to Mr. Morgan.
Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Aug 14, 2009 8:57 AM CST
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