6/19/2012

Hecklers at Romney events are getting paid to heckle him

With all the discussion over the last week about someone heckling Obama (really a reporter saying that he thought that Obama was finished and who tried to ask a question), it was interesting to see this claim.

The protesters popping up at Mitt Romney's rallies throughout Michigan Tuesday look like run-of-the-mill grassroots liberals — they wave signs about "the 99 percent," they chant about the Republican's greed, and they describe themselves as a loosely organized coalition of "concerned citizens."
They're also getting paid, two of the protesters and an Obama campaign official told BuzzFeed.
At the candidate's afternoon stop outside a bakery in DeWitt, a group of about 15 protesters stood behind a police barricade, a few of them chanting in support of Obama. Asked why he was protesting, a man dressed in a grim reaper costume pointed a reporter to a pair of "designated representatives" standing in the shade.
"I can't talk, you gotta get one of those people over there to talk to y'all," he said. "They're the ones who can talk to reporters."
Neither of the representatives agreed to give their names, but two protesters said they were getting paid to stand outside of the rally, though their wage is unclear: one said she was getting $7.25 per hour, while another man said they were being paid $17 per hour.
Meanwhile, about 50 feet away, another protest had been organized by local Democrats in conjunction with the Obama campaign. A campaign official told BuzzFeed they had nothing to do with the other group — which he said he believed they had been sent by the labor-backed "Good Jobs Now" — and confirmed that they were being paid. . . .
So given how upset Obama was with the reporter from the Daily Caller, will Obama call on unions to stop paying these people to heckle Romney? 

CNN reports a call from David Axelrod for Obama supporters to stop heckling Romney.  Do you think that if he was serious, that unions would really stop paying people to heckle Romney?  A tape of the CNN broadcast discussion starts at 9:55 into this segment of the Jon Stewart show.


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