Nasty rhetoric could backfire on bill's foes

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The verbal nastiness that has shadowed the health care reform debate peaked as the bill rumbled to a finish, with opponents shouting racial epithets and spitting at members of the Congressional Black Caucus while yelling anti-gay slurs at Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Members of Congress were hardly more civil to each other, with one anti-abortion GOP congressman decrying the legislation by shouting "It's a baby killer" on the floor of Congress.

While the remarks were repugnant to many people, First Amendment experts say the outbursts were protected speech because they didn't inspire immediate violence, said David L. Hudson Jr., a scholar at the nonpartisan First Amendment Center in Nashville.

But the overheated rhetoric could lead to political damage for those who oppose the health care reform plan.

"They're going to lose their audience," said Phyllis Gerstenfeld, a professor of criminal justice at Cal State Stanislaus who has studied hate speech. "At this point, to get ears, they're going to have to seem sympathetic."

Added UC Berkeley linguist and author Geoffrey Nunberg: "This way of talking is not going to serve the needs of people who are trying to appeal to independent voters."

Political rhetoric has become increasingly polarized over the past two decades and took an unusually nasty tenor late in the 2008 presidential campaign.

That carried over into the health care debate beginning in 2009, from raucous Tea Party-led protests at congressional town hall meetings to Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouting "You lie!" during President Obama's health care address to Congress in September.

On Sunday, Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, shouted "It's a baby killer" on the House floor as Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., commented on the health care bill after deciding to support the measure after leading a group of anti-abortion lawmakers to oppose it. On Tuesday, Neugebauer apologized for the outburst.

On Saturday, protesters outside the Capitol opposing health care reform yelled "Kill the bill," followed by "n-" at black Reps. John Lewis D-Ga., a civil rights icon, and Andre Carson, D-Ind., witnesses said.

At the same time, Frank was pelted with an anti-gay slur after meeting with fellow Democrats Saturday inside the Longworth House Office Building.

When asked what he thought of the slurs, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Alpaugh (Tulare County), told C-SPAN: "When you use totalitarian tactics, people begin to act crazy. People have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it."

Nunes added that such comments were "not appropriate."

But former President George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum warned of the political fallout.

"We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat" in the health care debate, Frum wrote on his blog, FrumForum.

"There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal making was rendered impossible," Frum wrote.

While the incendiary comments "play well on cable TV, there are 210 million eligible voters in the country and we've only seen the comments from a couple of dozen," said Morris Fiorina, a professor of political science at Stanford University.

"There's a fringe supporting every side of an issue," he said. "Just because someone on that fringe says something doesn't mean everybody on the issue feels that way. If you were to look at the left, did Cindy Sheehan speak for the tens of millions of people who opposed the Iraq war?"

E-mail Joe Garofoli at [email protected].