'Blue Dog' Steve Driehaus ripped, mocked, booed and laughed at during his Town Hall on Health Care

Correspondent Amalaur sent this report in from Ohio's District 1, where Steve Driehaus held a town hall on health care reform. While Driehaus campaigned as a fiscal conservative, he had the gall to vote for the Stimulus as well as Cap-and-Trade.

Apologies for the poor quality of photographs, these were taken using my phone. We got there early (about 6:10pm) for Steve Driehaus' town hall meeting that was scheduled for 7pm.

By 6:20, hundreds of people were in line. Once the doors opened, a tiny assembly room filled in moments. The organizers decided to move the meeting to the church's small (and very steamy) sanctuary. This allowed several hundred people to witness the debacle.

Not sure which group sponsored it, but NOW played a part and the organizers were very liberal. At first, they didn't even allow people to ask questions. You had to write questions down and submit them. The moderator began with a threat that "Teabaggers" who disrupted the proceedings would not be tolerated! Of course, the written question approach was a disaster, since there were hundreds of questions submitted (we had two, which weren't asked, of course).

Driehaus began with a canned statement of the typical Obama talking points and the crowd grew increasingly angry. A guy behind me yelled "Stop filibustering!" at about 7:15, at which point Driehaus gave in. He then started answering the written questions, mostly softball, that were picked out for him. The crowd started to get really rambunctious. One guy kept yelling out, "That was lie number (whatever)" when Driehaus repeated some nonsensical talking point like that there are 47 million uninsured.

You could hear a bunch of Tea Partiers outside yelling. Finally, enough attendees were sufficiently disruptive that Driehaus began taking real questions. There were a lot of good ones, about illegal immigrants covered under the bill... how the government couldn't run cash-for-clunkers, how could it run health care... etc.

I would say the ratio of those opposed to ObamaCare and single-payer ran about 8-to-1 (maybe more). In fact, when the "public option" was raised and people yelled that would destroy competition, one of the Obamatons screamed, "the public option is competition!". The guy next to me erupted, "No, it's MARXISM!"

The good news is that people are educated about what the public option is, which basically is a disaster for private insurance. One questioner noted that you could go on the Internet and get access to about 14,000 different health insurance quotes with reviews and so on. She wanted state portability. Driehaus, of course, ignored that part.

As the meeting progressed, folks got more and more fired up, openly laughing at Driehaus' talking points, mocking some of his more ridiculous answers ("I haven't made up my mind yet") and -- in general -- combating the patent falsehoods that he tried to market.

I felt bad for his daughter, who I think is about 12-years old. She didn't seem too happy to be there.

After an hour of questions, Driehaus called a halt to the proceedings. As the meeting broke up, chants of 'Vote for Chabot!' and 'Just say no!' rang out. Driehaus is a phony, through and through. He's no more a fiscal conservative than Nancy Pelosi.

Steve Chabot is the Republican that Driehaus displaced, barely, in 2008. Amalaur says that Chabot intends to run again in 2010.


Update: Doses of Reality also has a report on the event.

Update II: Driehaus makes the Drudge Report!

Linked by: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air's Ed Morrissey, Gateway Pundit, Wizbang, RightOhio and Oil for Immigration. Thanks!