Are the Town Hall disruptions staged?

Intimidatingly intelligent commenter Tom took exception to my post comparing the Town Hall disruptors to Hitler's brownshirts - and posted a rather fascinating link when he did so.

While I still stand by my accusations about the loud, verbally disruptive Conservatives who attend these meetings - and the intimidating, gun-toting thugs who linger menacingly nearby - this revelation is simply too astonishing NOT to repost.

Was the most famous OBAMA=HITLER placard a Democratic plant?

Is this man a fraud? And I mean the one holding the poster.

It sounds almost too absurd to be true, but Conservatives insist that one of the disruptive events I was blogging about - a man turning up to a town hall rally with a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache - might have actually been a fraud.

Democrat John Dingell held a Town Hall event last week, in which this angry protester was spotted with the enormous poster of Obama-as-Hitler. This was reported on MSM as proof that the Conservatives were engaging in dirty tactics to protest health care reform.

However, this same man was apparently spotted later in the day actually working with John Dingall's team - handing out fliers for the Democratic politician!

So was he a Democratic plant? Ordered to hoist a placard far more offensive than any the Conservatives themselves carried? There's anecdotal evidence to support that accusation here, on the link that Tom posted.

But what's perhaps more interesting than the accusation itself is the startling lack of proof.

Even in the words of the blogger Tom linked to; "If the link is out there," proving the accusation, "I haven't found it yet." It all apparently hangs off the word of a nameless couple who apparently attended the event - not exactly firm evidence.

But the fact that suspicion remains should remind us that the ol' 'Hitler' comparisons are used by both sides to attack each other - and perhaps that's something we should both stop doing.

For eight years, as Tom pointed out, President Bush was compared by Liberals to Hitler (which was stunningly absurd, since Hitler's primary attribute was being a powerful orator - and George Bush's patently wasn't!)

So surely it's just par for the course for the Conservatives to level the same accusation at Obama? (Who arguably did conjure up almost hypnotic support during his campaign.)

Well, even if it's not fair, they've insisted on doing so since before the election!

But why do I bring it up?

Because if Tom's right in the stern conclusion to his intricately researched comment, in which he argues that comparing the opposition to Nazis "shows which side has abandoned debate in favor of name-calling," surely both Conservatives and Liberals are equally guilty.

Perhaps Tom's comments suggest that we should 'step away from the Swastika' and start debating each other on the basis of facts from now on.