Pat Dollard

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Washington Times:

The White House on Tuesday dismissed protests against President Obama’s health care reforms in multiple states over the weekend as “manufactured anger.”

“I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astroturf nature of grass-roots lobbying,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs during a morning off-camera session in his office with reporters.

“This is manufactured anger,” he said.

Mr. Gibbs implied that the Republican Party is using operatives to make it appear as if members of the administration and of Congress are encountering genuine outrage and anger over the president’s proposed health care reforms.

Comparing the protests to the recount in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, Mr. Gibbs said that “the Brooks Brothers brigade . . . appears to have rented a similar bus and are appearing at town hall events throughout the country.”

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, Texas Democrat, encountered an angry crowd in Austin, Texas, that shouted at him to “just say no” to the Obama reforms, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, along with Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, encountered a crowd in Philadelphia on Sunday that at times drowned them out with shouts and boos.

Other members of Congress have encountered heckling and loud crowds over the past month, throwing a wrench into Democrats’ plans to use the August recess to promote their drive to pass a major health care package this fall.

Polls over the past two weeks also have showed a decline in public support for the president’s preferred approach to health care reform, which includes a government-run insurance option and coverage for all Americans.

Polls show that many Americans are concerned about the cost of such reforms and that the Republican message that a government option will crowd out private insurers and lead to government rationing of care is gaining ground.