I haven’t had any luck finding the transcript of Sen. McCaskill’s town hall gathering. If anyone gets a hold of it and feels like forwarding it to me, that’d be great.

My first reaction however to the bits and pieces I saw of the forum, was to praise and give credit to McCaskill for facing the people she represents and addressing their questions and problems with the legislation. In fact, of the forums that were given media attention, she did the best job answering people’s questions honestly. I disagree with her fundamentally over the kinds of reforms that are needed, but at least on the surface, she did a better job than President Obama did – answering questions from supporters and opponents alike and actually sounding like she cared.

But then I stopped myself. Why did I think for even a moment that she deserved any special credit for doing her job?! That’s what our representatives are supposed to – execute the will of their constituents. And there is no way to determine what their desires are unless you engage with them and debate the issues. But, we’ve gone so far from this tradition that when someone actually does their job, it’s shocking. To me, it’s akin to someone who’s been abused and becomes so used to it, that they are ever so grateful to the abuser when they are actually decent.

Las week, our President actually stated publicly:

“But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”

Then, at the beginning of this week, the administration launched a website to  ‘fight the smears’ about health care and noted that:

“[A]s more people become engaged in the issue, defenders of the status quo have responded by muddying the waters with more wild rumors and scare tactics.”

And the biggest insult of, all on Monday Americans woke up to an editorial by the Democratic Speaker of the House and House Majority Leader calling health care opponents un-American, ironically accusing them “of drowning out those who want to have a substantive discussion.”

The hypocrisy is overwhelming – especially given the complaints about the previous administration and of government generally that brought this President and a Democratically-led Congress to power. Wasn’t is Candidate Obama that touched a chord with people by tapping into their distrust of government and of the previous administration? In his acceptance speech at the DNC Obama said that the failure of government to respond to challenges was a result of the broken politics of the previous administration and that “our government should work for us, not against us.” And even more importantly, in start contrast to the drafters of the health care bill he so strongly supports, he stated:

“One of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism.”

In that same speech, he even alluded to “the cynicism we all have about government.” Now set aside the fact that that last sentiment is completely opposed to the big-government policies he supports. The point is somewhere along the way, these politicians who speak as if they’re in the center or right of center but vote with the left either forgot or never understood the fundamental distrust of government Americans possess. Sen. Specter added his two cents, stating he doesn’t think that the protestors are really representative of the rest of the country. I’d like to know what newspapers he reads, what polls he looks at, what kind of people he surrounds himself with, and what TV news shows he might watch if he thinks that the protestors that showed up at his town hall are just outliers.

The short-term memory of liberals, both those in and out of power, has been front and center this week. The same people who complained for years about the Bush administration trampling on their rights have no words for liberal politicians who would literally rather sacrifice free speech than make any concessions to their opponents. This has been mentioned plenty of times this week, but imagine the reaction of those same liberals if the Bush administration had come out and asked the public to send them the contact information and topics discussed by those who opposed their plans?

It hasn’t even been a year since the election. And already Democrats have forgotten how they won the last election – it wasn’t by alienating people or questioning their patriotism. And the circus continues…