I'm surprised the fact that Republican members of Congress openly booed president Obama from inside the House chamber during the Sunday health care reform vote didn't become more of a thing in the media. (You can hear some of the boo's here, at the 1:40 mark.) It certainly seemed newsworthy to me, and possibly unprecedented. I mean, there are strict rules of decorum, right?
And keep in mind, this wasn't Obama's political opponents booing in response to something the president said while speaking to Congress. This wasn't Republicans taking issue with a statement Obama made that they thought was inaccurate. (Dems did that during the 2005 SOTU when Bush made false statements about Social Security.) This was Obama's political opponents booing the mere mention of the president's name.
But according to Politico's account, it's normal for members of Congress to boo the president:
Then there was the scene on the Speaker's Balcony adjacent to the chamber. All day Sunday, House Republicans walked from the floor to shout encouragement and wave American flags to whip up a crowd of boisterous anti-health-bill protesters.
All of this was accompanied by the more typical chamber mischief used by any party in the minority, including frequent interruptions of opponents with points of order and booing mentions of the president's name.
Really? It was “typical” during the previous administartion for Democratic members of Congress to loudly boo whenever president Bush's name was mentioned in the chamber?
That doesn't seem quite right.