Updated In a new e-mail letter, Tim Kaine, the head of the Democratic National Committee, asks supporters to pledge $5 or more to help defend lawmakers from the threats they’ve reported after the health care bill passed over the weekend.
Titled “Heroes Under Attack,” Mr. Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, writes:
On Sunday night, many Congressional Democrats in tough districts cast courageous votes for health reform — even though they knew that insurance companies and their Republican allies would retaliate immediately.
Well, the attacks are here. Shameful, negative ads have already hit the air waves. Democratic offices have been vandalized. Republicans are promising to repeal reform and smearing those who supported it.
Carl Hulse, the chief Congressional correspondent of The Times, reports that at least 10 lawmakers reported receiving death threats or have had their district offices vandalized, after a weekend of angry protests outside the Capitol Building while the House debated and voted on the measure.
Mr. Kaine’s letter puts the blame for the attacks on Republicans and their allies, and urges them to tamp down the fury among some opponents of the health bill. In a statement Wednesday, Representative John A. Boehner, the minority leader, tried to do just that: “I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening. But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change.”
Other conservatives have shrugged off the threats and slurs hurled at Democrats over the weekend as media noise, and dismissed the attention they received as a public relations maneuver by proponents of the health care overhaul. Brent Bozell, the head of the Media Research Center, argued in a column posted by GOP USA that the intent of the reports was to taint Tea Party activists:
It is understandable that Democrats would want this opposition to their power grab to be reduced to absurdity, a spasm of racism and homophobia instead of organized conservative idealism. It is deplorable that our national “news” media went into overdrive on this Democrat public-relations initiative. To listen to the press, the Tea Party’s presence in Washington was violent, dangerous, uncivil and unprecedented, and their protests threatened to ruin the Republican image — as if that isn’t at the top of the liberal media’s To-Do list every day.
Of course, the Democratic Party isn’t alone in making appeals off the aftermath of the health care vote. The Republican National Committee began a “Fire Pelosi” drive early Monday; the committee boasted that it had raised nearly $1.5 million so far this week. The online effort depicts Speaker Nancy Pelosi surrounded by flames — an image that Mr. Kaine cited as evidence that “Republicans and the extreme right wing are responding by pushing fear and intimidation.”
The R.N.C. started the latest fund-raising campaign in hopes of defeating enough Democrats in the midterm elections to take back control of the House.
Update: At her briefing, Ms. Pelosi talked about the threats against lawmakers and the harsh language aimed at lawmakers over the weekend. “Words have power,” she said. “They weigh a ton.” She urged Republicans to renounce the use of “unsavory and menancing” language to criticize the new health care law and its supporters.
The speaker said Republicans “have to take responsibility” for the words if they do not publicly reject them. But she also declined to paint all protesters with a broad negative brush, saying they have a right to free expression.
As for money raised through Mr. Kaine’s appeal, Brad Woodhouse, the D.N.C.’s communications director, said: “We’ll use it to educate the public, to hold Republicans accountable who refuse to condemn these acts – bringing this stuff to light and holding people accountable whose rhetoric and behavior contributes to it. It is an important step in bringing it to an end.”
Carl Hulse contributed to this post.
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