WASHINGTON (CNN) – The organizer of a "Tea Party" protest in Virginia says he intends to move forward with plans to burn House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Perriello in effigy next weekend at a rally to protest Democratic health care legislation.
The event is scheduled for next Saturday in Danville, which borders North Carolina and sits at the southern end of Perriello's congressional district. Perriello, a Democrat, narrowly won his House seat in 2008 and is considered a top target of Congressional Republicans in next year's midterm elections.
When news of the rally surfaced Friday, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen condemned the plans as "shocking and despicable."
But Nigel Coleman, the organizer of the Tea Party, told CNN he doesn't see what all the fuss is about. The attention, he said, should be on the Democratic plans to overhaul the health care system.
"We're not going to actually set Perriello on fire or Mrs. Pelosi on fire," Coleman said. "But we have been trying to months to get our point across just how vehemently we are opposed to this health care legislation. For the House vote to come so close and to know that Mr. Perriello is on the other side, it's a kick in the stomach that a lot of people couldn't take."
Coleman said none of Perriello's potential Republican challengers have been invited to the event, which he expects will draw about 100 people.
"Something shocking and despicable is how they've handled this health care legislation," Coleman said, responding to Van Hollen's statement. "Going behind closed doors, writing a bill that is going to fundamentally change what America is. More people are going to be killed by this health care legislation than this bonfire."
From CNN Politics
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What viscious, mindless people. Maybe if they had a cogent argument to offer they wouldn't have to resort to mob rule and threats of violence. It's like watching Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. What the heck do you think burning a person in effigy is meant to signify; only that you disagree with them? Another grand example of the failure of our educational system.
Oh ho, wasn't the idiot Carrie Prejean just saying the other day how Sarah Palin and other republican women come under attack more often and harshly than liberal women?? I don't remember Palin ever being BURNED IN EFFIGY.
These people are extremely dangerous. For safety of everyone else it might not be such a bad idea to burn them....I"m just saying.
The tea people ( I find it hard to say Tea Party because of the true cause-not some fake organizers dressed like new England Patriot cannon watchers- that was represented by that event near Boston) have every right to believe what they do. They have every right to show it how they choose. However, with each passing event, I learn about just how disrespectful they are. They are saying that they believe it right to fight what they perceive as wrong with something that truly is wrong, showing disrespect to politicians. I'm certain that the "members" of the party will find a way to spin this as if they are right (no pun intended). I also find it intriguing how one of the spokespersons used old (and deceptive) tv footage to try to make a point. I guess that is okay with the tea people.
However dramatic this may sound, my heart breaks every time I
see reports like this "effigy" hanging. America is better than this,
and the growing hateful rhetoric, name calling, and unwillingness to
listen to the other side has put us on a dangerous road. I could
name the most frightening of these people, with their 'my way,
or the highway mentality' (sound familiar?), but we all know who
they are, and they are systematically destroying the best of
America. I know we have First Amendment rights, but when I am
greeted at the door of my Post Office by people with their Hitler
signs of President Obama along with all of the above mentioned
stupidity, and yet they have the legal right to do this I am saddened.
There is a right and a wrong way to protest. Hate does not
come under that umbrella.
I guess that the Republican Party will have to change its name to the Anarchist Party. These people in Danville are more un-American than the Al Queda terrorists!
When I first saw the headline I had to take a double take on it. I then thought this what radical islamists do. We have our own home grown radicals right here in the good old USA. They call themselves patriotic Americans, I call them enemies of the state.
Next it will be burning crosses and white sheets with just peep holes hanging President Obama in effigy from a tree.
Of course, that is all a con needs to view their narrow and small bitter little world.
What a sad lot the republiKKKlans have become.
I am conservative, and I have to say that this goes too far. Please, people, stop the madness.
How impotent can you get. Health care reform is about helping Americans not corporations, you misguided tea bagging dolts. Sure, let's just let the health care insurers and pharmaceutical companies keep bleeding us financially. We are4 the only nation of our wealth that does not have some form of universal health care and we pay much more than anyone else. You are opposed to health care legislation because you have some. How many tea-baggers don't have health coverage. You hypocrites!
I have never seen such hatred of Democrats in my 48 years in America. I truly see civil war on the horizon. Pelosi and Obama are hated more than Hitler and Stalin were, to be sure.
Go for it – just like the 1776 Patriots did to King George III. Rallying against an oppressive government that curtails freedom and liberty is in our blood. Godspeed to the next America Revolution!
I am very ashamed to be from Virginia right now because of people like this. People like that only think about them selves and hell with all the others.
Wow. Just...wow.
This is exactly why don't count myself as a Republican anymore after 2005.
If the worst that happens is a few politicians get burned in effigy, the country will be lucky.
People like Pelosi, and a lot of other Democrats, just don't seem to understand how thoroughly outraged a lot of us are, how furious we're being made, by their efforts to impose a government-run health on us.
If the proponents of government health care want to tax each other into penury, if they want to inflict second-rate health care on each other, fine. But leave the rest of us out of it.
When I think of this kind of thing, I tend to think of anti-American extremists in the Middle East dancing around a burning George W. Bush. Not the kind of thing I would think any reasonable, level-headed group would want to be associated with. So then the logical question would be how reasonable are these Pelosi burners?
These tea party people see nothing wrong with this? Why not burn a cross somewhere you effin' morons.
So some extremists are burning effigies of America's democratically elected leadership...
Hmmmm...
I know these kind of people...and I know what they are capable of.
You mean that's it? Is that all these morons, who obviously have too much time on their hands, can do. Dear God what a waste of time
If the worst that happens is a few politicians get burned in effigy, the country will be lucky.
People like Pelosi, and a lot of other Democrats, just don't seem to understand how thoroughly outraged a lot of us are, how furious we're being made, by their efforts to impose a government-run health system on us.
If the proponents of government health care want to tax each other into penury, if they want to inflict second-rate health care on each other, fine. But leave the rest of us out of it.
wow......this is what the conservatives have reduced themselves to.....we'd might as well be Lebanon.
Tea party attendees are much like what you would see in a third world country.
Is this really what American has come to? Really?
And I was talking about burning in effigy, not the health care bill...
No doubt the organizers will be handing out burning torches and pitchforks to the angry mob. What lunacy!