"If at first you don't succeed ... wait two decades for a new Congress, and then try again."

If that credo isn't matted, framed, and hanging on the office wall of Rep. John P. Murtha, it should be.

On July 22, Murtha's Defense Appropriations Subcommittee reported out a $636 billion appropriations bill that included funding for new airplanes in which the Air Force could ferry Members of Congress around the world.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested Tuesday morning that angry protesters showing up at the town hall meetings held by members of Congess are in fact some kind of manufactured opposition, presumably being driven not by their opposition to the Democrats’ plans for health care overhaul, but instead by their service to some corporate master.

“I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astroturf nature of grass-roots lobbying,” Gibbs said in this morning’s gaggle. “The Brooks Brothers brigade … appear to have rented a similar bus and are appearing together at town hall meetings throughout the country.”

House and Senate Democratic leaders are sending members home for the August break equipped with information on health care overhaul efforts to share with constituents. The talking-points cards list faults of the current system, benefits of the proposed plan and the plan’s effect on specific districts. Members have been encouraged to hold town hall meetings to discuss the issue.

How long will it be before Gibbs is linking his “Manufactured Opposition Theory” to the story of Jack Bonner and forged letters of opposition to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate change bill?

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