TPM Editor’s Blog

Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Guy

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

As Congress fans out across this great nation to do townhalls in districts and home states, please remember to keep us posted on what you see and hear — whether you’re attending townhalls or simply seeing reports in the local press.

I just noticed this report of what John McCain had to deal with this week at a Tea Party-deluged townhall in Gilbert, Arizona.

There seem to have been two main topics of conversation: whether McCain would apologize for calling Tea Partiers hobbits and what he was going to do about the UN’s plans to take away their farms.

From the Arizona Republic

Tea-party activists called McCain “out of touch” when the senator said he didn’t know about United Nations “Agenda 21.”One man described the initiative as a “takeover of the United States of America by taking over our farms.”

“First, our firearms, then our farms,” another man added.

McCain said no Congress would allow that to happen, but that didn’t satisfy several in the room who subscribed to the theory.

Gilbert has been a hotbed for the conservative tea-party movement for a few years, and groups have organized anti-tax rallies there and had a growing influence on local elections.

As the townhall broke up, another disgruntled attendee repeatedly shouted: “Where’s our fence?”

What’s up in your local town hall? Please let us know. Send an email to our comments email address at the upper right hand corner of the site.

Josh Marshall

Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.

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