The NH Republican Party is looking for a "Sheila Jackson Lee moment." Jackson Lee is the congresswoman from Texas who (in a blatantly faked video) supposedly whipped out her cellphone in the middle of a constituent's question.
This time, at the end of the event, a constituent approached Carol Shea Porter at the end of the event as she is about to brave a tropical storm and rush off to another event. Carol listens for a while and then (gasp!) turns her back because it is time to (gasp!) leave even though not every Republican in Manchester has had the chance to personally confront her with an inane accusation. This is purportedly just a random cellphone video, until the last frame where we learn that it was sponsored by the New Hampshire Republican Party. You can view it on YouTube, and it is embedded below the fold.
Here is the video. It purports to be an unedited cellphone video (aside from some titles.) The video was almost certainly shot in one take. The audio is muffled and it also appears to be real (although bad technical quality is often used to mask fakery, so ya never know.)
Shea Porter had a good reason for leaving: she had another event to go to. And in this case, Tropical Storm Danny was blowing by, so the weather was bad and her entourage would need more time than usual to get to the next place.
Shea-Porter also had three good reasons for not answering the woman's question: #1, it was a rude question. #2, it was a rhetorical question which is unanswerable and #3, she answered plenty of questions already. I seem to recall at the Portsmouth event that we attendees were told more than once that the Congresswoman would only stay for about an hour and that not everyone's questions would be answered at the forum and that not everyone would be pleased with every answer (and also we were told that anyone who wasn't from NH CD-01 wouldn't be allowed to ask questions at all.) Anyone who found those ground rules unacceptable was free to leave. I am sure it was the same at this event, which was the earlier one in Manchester.
(Frank Guinta operated by similar ground rules in Exter on August 31st, although he faced a less raucous audience and hence the rules were more flexible. In his case, his adversaries were mostly liberals and not many of them: our first response when we hear something we don't like is to listen semi-politely and poke fun at the speaker. Although we liberals can scream even louder and jab our index fingers even more forcefully than any conservative, the mere fact that someone else holds different views doesn't usually force a liberal to throw a Terrible-Two-like temper tantrum.)
I am amazed by the childishness of the Republican Party. They act like whiny little kids, who just can't get enough attention from mean ol' Carol Shea-Porter, and are always being treated unfairly. Grow up people!
I don't quite understand why they are so anxious about getting their questions answered by Congresswoman Shea-Porter: Shea-Porter's answers are alays eloquent and truthful, but they are not the answers the other side wants to hear. (And when she does try to answer a hostile question, her opponents just heckle her without listening to what she has to say.)
