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Editorials

Mistaken Phone Poll Reveals Support for Impeachment

by Phil Burk, 5/15/07

Speaker Pelosi's phones were recently swamped with folks calling and asking for impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Why the sudden burst of activity? There are many reasons including the Article of Impeachment against Dick Cheney recently filed by Dennis Kucinich. But one big factor was an Internet meme that exploded across the net in early May. The evolution of this meme may teach us something about the political process.

For years activists have been trying to get the public to call their Representatives and ask for impeachment. The response has been similar to when dentists tell people to floss. Everyone knows it is important and the right thing to do but it doesn't always happen. So why this sudden burst of political activism from a usually passive public?

Email messages can evolve just like living things. They mutate when people quote them and the more successful ones get passed on. What happened in this case is that a blog asked folks to call Pelosi because her "office is taking calls voting for Impeachment". That is certainly true. Congress always welcomes calls and keeps tallies of peoples opinions.

This morphed eventually into "Pelosi taking phone poll" on impeachment. That is almost the same thing but implied that Pelosi actually cared about what people thought and might actually act on the result. This glimmer of hope inspired a flood of calls to Pelosi's office.

The origins of this meme are a bit unclear. But on April 27th, Bob Fertik of Democrats.com posted an article on "Pelosi's Nutty Argument Against Impeachment". Bob refuted each of Pelosi's arguments on by one.

On April 30th this comment appeared on the same page.

Edited on Mon Apr-30-07 05:33 PM by sfexpat2000
From my Code Pink list:

"PLEASE CALL Nancy Pelosi's office right now. Here's
the deal as forwarded to me:

House Speaker Pelosi's office is taking calls voting
for Impeachment of Bush/Cheney at 202-225-0100.

Folks, each of you who have been wanting Impeachment,
need to commit right now to ask at least 10 others to
call and ask each person to commit to asking 10 others
to call and so on. It needs to happen fast and NOW.
Let's BLITZKREIG the Speaker's office with demands for
Impeachment of Bush AND Cheney.

Please make a call, and thanks so very much."
Edit to list Sapphire Blue's suggestion to add CaliMary's list of toll free numbers.

HERE IS A LIST OF TOLL FREE CAPITOL HILL SWITCHBOARD NUMBERS:
1 (800) 828 - 0498
1 (800) 459 - 1887
1 (800) 614 - 2803
1 (866) 340 - 9281
1 (866) 338 - 1015
1 (877) 851 - 6437

On May 1st, someone posted this comment in response to Bob's blog.

Submitted by kwahlf on May 1, 2007 - 10:15am.

This is certainly true. Members of Congress always welcome phone calls from their constituents and they generally tally them as for or against the issue.

But this simple plea for traditional somehow mutated into this post on May 2rd. They link back to Bob's April 27th blog as the source.

The Forest

Pelosi taking phone poll on Bush/Cheney Impeachment!!!! 12022250100
B23111 / Wed, 2 May 2007 10:03:58 / Government

House Speaker Pelosi wants to hear your opinion on Bush/Cheney impeachment

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is conducting a phone poll -- the number is 1-202-225-0100. Just call in and say something to the effect of "I'd like to register my support for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." If you're tired of the way things are going, take 45 seconds out of your day to make some change.

Conclusion

One should never mislead people into calling Congress. And in this case I do not think there was any deliberate attempt to mislead people. But I think the lesson here is that if the message is concise, and offers hope that Congress may actually care what people think, then people will call.

 

         

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