To Town Hall or To Not Town Hall

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
that Flesh is heir to?

I couldn't find anything in there about not getting re-elected, but I believe it is. Here's a good article at CSM on the slings and arrows coming Republican congresscritter's ways.

“Democracy is a messy thing, and this shows it – and it’s also a fragile thing,” says James Thurber, founder of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. “That’s why members of Congress have got to get used to this and listen to the feedback or there will be consequences for them, electorally.”

Some seem to duck and parry well.

Rep. Justin Amash (R) of Michigan stayed an extra 40 minutes to talk with angry constituents. And Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R) of Florida rejected the allegations that boisterous constituents at his events were bused in and paid, responding: “Most of these people are my constituents."

Some don't.

 At the Greensboro meeting, Ms. Keegan, a 20-something graduate student at the University of Georgia in Athens, for the first time in her life told strangers about a chronic medical condition that could ruin her financially should ACA be repealed. The speech, she says, was well-received by both the crowd and the aides to Georgia's two US senators and the area's US representative – all Republicans.

Afterward, she says, her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“I felt deeply thrown off balance, because this wasn’t just sort of a political issue that I was concerned about, this was a feeling of intense vulnerability and fear for my own body, and it really surprised me,” says Keegan.

So when a spokesperson for Sen. David Perdue – one of the legislators holding the event – called it a “manufactured protest,” Keegan felt like she had been slapped in the face.