Specter Opponent Reacts to Town Halls

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," August 11, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Leave us alone. That's all we would ask for. Would you leave us alone?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sick of the lies. I don't like being lied to. I don't like being lied about.

KATY ABRAM: You have awakened the sleeping giant. We are tired of this. This is why everybody in this room is so ticked off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We cannot afford this period. Keep the government out of it, we're doing just fine. Thank you, sir.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Very powerful. More sights and sounds from Senator Specter's town hall meeting from earlier today where the utter frustration over health care just could not be contained.

Now my next guest is going to be running against Senator Specter in the 2010 election and he's here to respond to the growing town hall tension.

And joining me now is Pat Toomey. He is also the author of the "Road to Prosperity: How to Grow Our Economy and Revive the American Dream."

Pat, good to see you. Welcome back. Thank you.

• Video: Watch Sean's interview

PAT TOOMEY, "THE ROAD TO PROSPERITY" AUTHOR: Thanks for having me, Sean.

HANNITY: You know, I'm watching all of these mobsters and all of these un-Americans, people speaking out with their swastikas according to Nancy Pelosi. And I see veterans, I see the elderly, I see this woman that we just had on, a 35-year-old woman that has not historically been that politically active.

The passion that is there.

TOOMEY: Right.

HANNITY: Do you think the Democrats are tone deaf?

TOOMEY: I'm amazed at how the Democrats are misreading this, Sean, or else they have just decided that since they have complete control of the elective government they're just going to ram it through regardless of what people want.

But I run into people in Pennsylvania every single day that are so much like Katy. People who are just really worried about the direction that this government is trying to take our country, the erosion of freedom. The attack on capitalism. The lurch to the left.

People are genuinely worried. You know as well as I do you can't manufacture the kind of concern and angst and turnout that's happening all across the country.

HANNITY: How is this going to impact, do you think, maybe your race as you go up against Senator Specter in the 2010 election. Do you think this will have an impact? Will this carry on through the election?

TOOMEY: I think it really will. Because Senator Specter has been and for that matter his Democratic primary opponent Joe Sestak, the two of these guys have supported all the bailouts. They've supported all the massive spending. They supported big government, health care takeover.

They support denying workers the secret ballot in various forms, you know? And the American people, Pennsylvanians, are becoming just shocked, really, by this — the aggressiveness of this lurch to the left.

HANNITY: Yes.

TOOMEY: And I think people realize that when one party has complete control of the elected government this kind of excess is what you have. And we ought to have some balance. And that's going to be very helpful to someone like me running in 2010.

HANNITY: Pat, it's interesting, because Katy was describing, you know, all the names that she's being called in just — you know, in a 10-hour period of time and names I frankly have been called unfair throughout my entire career. But I'm in the public eye, I'm fair game. I don't really care.

TOOMEY: Right.

HANNITY: But I've never witnessed the time with the leaders of a political party would attack the American people. Look at this montage of Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Baird and John Dingell. And I want to get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY PELOSI, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, D-CALIF.: I think they are Astroturf, you be the judge, of carrying swastikas and symbols like that to town meeting on health care.

CONGRESSMAN BRIAN BAIRD, D-WASH.: Some of the rhetoric that we're hearing is vaguely and not vaguely but eerily reminiscent of the kind of things that drove Tim McVeigh to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma.

CONGRESSMAN JOHN DINGELL, D-MICH.: For the last time I had to confront something like this is when I voted for the Civil Rights Bill and my opponent voted against it. At that time we had a lot of Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacist and folks in white sheets and other things running around causing trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Swastikas, Tim McVeigh, KKK? I see grandmothers. I see, you know, stay-at-home moms like Katy and veterans and parents with kids in wheelchairs.

TOOMEY: They are so wrong on this. And they are going to figure this out, Sean, that wildly insulting ordinary, honest, decent, hard-working American people this way is not even smart politics. This is a really big mistake on their part. And they're going to pay a big price. My guess is they'll figure this out before long, but I'm shocked that it's taking them this long.

HANNITY: Yes, I am, too. One last question. As the Republicans now move forward with this, because the Democrats have all the power. They can pass this bill. They are even talking about a nuclear option. If they can't get their 60-vote filibuster number in the Senate or filibuster-proof number.

If they ram this down America's throats, what will be the political consequences for the Democratic Party?

TOOMEY: A huge backlash against them. You know, you don't make profound, huge changes to such a large segment of our economy and do it in a strictly partisan fashion, ignoring the energy and intensity and passion of very nearly, if not greater than half of the American public.

It's a big mistake if they try to do it that way.

HANNITY: All right. Congressman — senator-to-be Pat Toomey from the great state of Pennsylvania. Thanks for being with us.

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