The 2007 Federal Fiscal Budget meeting that aired on C-SPAN (3/29/06) provided a clear example of demonstrating the immediacy behaviors of committee members who were either actively listening; trying to listen but unconsciously distracted (using adapters); or clearly demonstrating contempt for a speaker by displaying signals of disinterest by overly dramatic use of adaptors (fidgeting, picking lint, swiveling their chairs from side to side, looking at the ceiling or other papers.
The 2007 Federal Budget meeting was dominated by Republicans by a 3 to 1 margin. Nearly all proposals from Democrats were voted against by Republican members with exception to amendments containing nothing more than a “Sense of the Congress.”
The Republican Party’s dominance by sheer numbers at the committee meeting created a situation of futility for the Democrats. The sense of absolute power in the room was demonstrated particularly by junior Republican congressmen who, while a Democrat was speaking, would lean back in their chairs, attend to lint on their sleeves, begin rocking from side to side, pick up a piece of paper and look at it, tap their pencils, look at the ceiling, lower their eyebrows and curl the corners of their mouths back in expressions that covey the message “here we go again.”
These behaviors are sometimes triggered by loud and/or condescending tones of voice, eyebrows lowered and wrinkled, arms akimbo, finger pointing, hand wringing, and salient rhetoric.
Now the shoe is on the other foot, and still, Democrats are trying to reach across the isle, and still, they draw back stumps.
Who is better? What could Republicans possibly expect from Democrats.
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