Remember how Tom Sawyer managed to get out of the onerous job of painting Aunt Polly's fence? He just employed a little misleading rhetoric and persuaded his friends that it was the best fun ever, and if they would only pay him for the privilege, he would surrender the paint brush and let them paint to their hearts content.
Isn't this exactly what the GOP and their media supporters have managed to do in reverse? That is, take a long lineup list of Democratic legislative achievements that will make our lives better, persuade a big swath of not so savy Americans that the list is a criminal indictment, and if they'll only fork over their votes, they'll get in on the fun and get to lob some figurative stones at the responsible malefactors.
Let us be clear - Republicans have done nothing for two years but try to stamp their sclerotic old feet on the brakes. It was Democrats who stabilized the economy and staved off another Great Depression. Democrats gave us health care reform that will provide millions of previously uninsured people with protection, rationalize medical spending and ultimately contribute to lowering the deficit. In spite of massive lobbying efforts to stop them, Democrats took on the broken regulatory system and passed a major financial oversight bill. There are dozens of smaller achievements.
But just today we read in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Robin Carnahan hid from the Vice President when he visited here on Friday. The report details the ways she tries to brush off any association with the successes of the past two years. If you read Michael Bersin's recent Claire McCaskill Q&A posts, you'll note that she's definitely on the defensive also. Which leads one to ask: Why aren't our Missouri Democrats on the attack instead of on the run? Don't they know that if you run, you're gonna get chased down and the end isn't usually pretty?
I don't mean to be too hard on our Missouri Democrats - who would probably love to do the right thing. They are no different from the rest of the party. As a group, they've been outclassed by the Tom Sawyers of the GOP, who have joined up with the media arm of their right-wing noise machine to blast heavy-duty flim-flam from coast to coast - and Americans sure do like them some flim-flam.
In part, this is an issue of what George Lakoff calls framing although I prefer to talk about hijacking. Republicans use simple, frequently dishonest, often manufactured refrains, repeated incessantly and aimed at the gut in order to hijack perceptions. They're cynical enough, crazy enough, or stupid enough to do this without qualms. And how should Democrats respond to being hijacked by crazed morons? Certainly not by pretending to be just as cynical, crazy or stupid.
Remember the Maersk Alabama hijacking? The ship's crew didn't jump overboard - they threw the hijackers off. Before Democrats can successfully reframe their agenda, they have to stand up to Republicans. If they jump off the boat, it's lost.
Instead of hemming and hawing about her previous support for health care, why doesn't Carnahan demand to know how Blunt could vote against the welfare of the millions of Americans? Why aren't Carnahan, McCaskill and other Missouri Democrats demanding that the Republican zealots stand up and face a few unpleasant facts? Why are they all so dammed nice and quiet, only speaking up when they think they might be able to claim a Republican brownie point? Instead of running in the direction that the polls point, why aren't they out there planting the direction signs? Where are our leaders?
* Third from last paragraph edited for clarity. The phrase "frequently dishonest, often manufactured" was added to the second sentence .
Today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on the ongoing efforts of St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil (R-Defiance) to get bikes banned from rural Southwestern St. Charles country roads - seems he listens closely to those folks who resent having to share the road with bicyclists. As a person who frequently commuted to work by bicycle when I lived in the San Francisco Bay area - where, incidentally, droves of bicycles regularly share narrow, curving mountain roads with cars with few accidents - I could easily visualize the type of folks who might complain.
I have vivid memories of elderly people on deserted streets who, despite having acres of space in which to pass me as I hugged the side of the street, instead reduced their speed to a crawl and made exasperated faces and gestures as they followed me slowly along the street. Or the teen-age girls who yelled obscenities at me as I followed prescribed procedure for making a left-hand turn in traffic. This didn't happen too often in Palo Alto, and the perpetrators were not people whom one would accord much credibility. In retrospect, however, their rather irrational sense of entitlement suggests that they might have been just the type of folks who would be at home at a Tea Party - which could explain our Republican pol's concern for their druthers rather than those of bike riders.
Such speculation is spurious, of course, but it does seem that I might not be too wrong about many anti-bicyclists' political sympathies. According to TPM, the Denver Post is reporting that a Tea Party friendly gubnatorial candiate, Don Maes, is opposing a public bicycle program in Denver as one more encroachment of the evil United Nations. In Maes own somewhat breathless words:
At first, I thought, 'Gosh, public transportation, what's wrong with that, and what's wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what's wrong with incentives for green cars?' But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI* is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty," he said. Well then: it all becomes clear
Now that I understand what's going on, I guess it means that there's no point in my petitioning to keep trucks off the roads because sharing road space with them is so unpleasant and potentially unsafe. We know who counts in Missouri, and they're not usually Prius drivers.
* ICLEI: Denver is a member of the ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives), an international association that according to the Denver Post article "promotes sustainable development and has attracted the membership of more than 1,200 communities, 600 of which are in the United States." - Denver's membership, however, predates the current Mayor's public bicycle program.
FiredUp!posted photographs of Tea Partiers protesting a planned visit from their most enthusiastic champion, Michele Bachmann, on behalf of good ol' boy Roy Blunt. One sign bears the legend "Save Michele from Blunt Trauma." This concern about her welfare vis-a-vis Roy Blunt may have come too late though, since Bachmann canceled her trip to Missouri in order to continue what her Website describes as a "full and quick recovery" from a "sudden" illness of an undisclosed nature for which she briefly visited the hospital on Friday.
Bachmann did address Blunt's volunteers via Skype, but, nevertheless, if I weren't so obviously averse to malicious speculation, and if her spokesman had not so very carefully indicated otherwise, I might be inclined to think that Bachmann may have already succumbed to a little Blunt trauma before she even got here - and I wouldn't blame her if she had. The Tea Partiers I've seen are a pretty scary bunch. I wouldn't want them thinking that I'd been using them and then dissing them.
* Photo showing Bachmann announcing the formation of a congressional Tea Party Caucus
"....Public schools are closing. Teachers are being laid off by the thousands. First class jails and second class schools. Today there is a plan, a plan for comprehensive immigration reform. A plan for Afghanistan, we commit resources, a hundred billion dollars for a hundred Al Qaeda. A plan, don't ask, don't tell, for gays. A plan for national reform. But no plan for the investment for urban policy to put America back to work. So, we bail out the predators, the bankers that drove us in this hole. The victims remain on the sideline desperately looking for a job...." - Reverend Jesse Jackson, NAACP National Convention, July 14, 2010.
"....Suddenly, Republican leaders want to change that. They say we shouldn't provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they've finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed. They've got no problem spending money on tax breaks for folks at the top who don't need them and didn't even ask for them; but they object to helping folks laid off in this recession who really do need help. And every day this goes on, another 50,000 Americans lose that badly needed lifeline...."President Obama, weekly address, July 17, 2010.
Oh, the republicans have a plan for November 2010.
President Obama's weekly address for July 17, 2010:
Why it should matter to anyone, I have a hard time understanding, but in the latest commercial from the Allen Icet for state auditor campaign, Joe the Plumber, who has taken his 15 minutes of fame and stretched it beyond all reason, declares his support for Icet and compares him to a glass of "iced tea...
Sam Wurzelbacher: To get our nation back we must elect honest leaders that will hold our government and themselves accountable. That is why I am proud to support Allen Icet for Missouri Auditor. I know Allen and he's an honest man that you can trust to protect your tax dollars. But don't just take my word for it, do your own research and I think that a little ice tea is exactly what you need.
MISSOURI ETHICS COMMISSION
CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR - TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION
....Sarah Palin urged her supporters to "stop" cars with Obama stickers and confront them with her sarcastic cutsey catchphrase, "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for you?"....
The Obama/Biden bumper stickers will stay on our vehicles until we stop seeing these.
....The Republican State Convention was held at the Portland Exposition Building, which is on Park Avenue, near the middle school. Party members from Knox County caucused in a classroom used by eighth-grade social studies teacher Paul Clifford...
...Later, Clifford learned that his classroom had been searched. Republicans who had attended the convention called Principal Mike McCarthy to complain about "anti-American" things they saw there, including a closed box containing copies of the U.S. Constitution that were published by the American Civil Liberties Union....
The Constitution is anti-American? Go figure. That would explain a lot.
...the Right has constructed its own Bubble World, a sort of political Truman Show complete with its own facts and rules (albeit facts and rules that are constantly changing based on political expediency). The writers, directors, and actors in this conservative version of Seahaven are the legions of GOP politicians, operatives, and conservative media outlets that relentlessly push this politically expedient alternative reality, and the Trumans are the millions of regular Americans who don't realize the joke is on them...
...In this alternative universe, the facts are literally whatever the political consultants say they should be. Whatever resonates with the focus group. If you're working on behalf of Wall Street lobbyists to kill a bill that would impose more accountability on Wall Street, you simply accuse those who support the bill of doing Wall Street's bidding. It doesn't matter that this is the opposite of the truth and is, in fact, exactly what you're doing. While these facts might matter to people in the empirical world, the facts in Bubble World are whatever the right wing wants them to be....
Representative Jason Kander (D), via Twitter, on the state of ethics reform legislation today in Jefferson City:
I'm in House Rules committee where they are finally discussing the ethics bill. Will they send it to the floor? about 4 hours ago via Echofon
Delaying a bipartisan ethics bill to make it partisan is exactly the kind of politics I hoped to avoid this year. about 4 hours ago via Echofon
Rules cmmte is ground zero for the "cold feet" illness sweeping the Capitol. Ethics reform heads back to cmmte. Absurd. about 4 hours ago via Echofon
Despite obstacles such as today, we've gotten pretty far on ethics reform. Redoubling my efforts in the last 3 wks of session. about 1 hour ago via HootSuite
Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Twitter:
According to @jasonkander, House rules committee sent ethics bill back to its House committee. Doesn about 4 hours ago via TweetDeck
"I am deeply disappointed that Senate Republicans voted in a block against allowing a public debate on Wall Street reform to begin. Some of these Senators may believe that this obstruction is a good political strategy, and others may see delay as an opportunity to take this debate behind closed doors, where financial industry lobbyists can water down reform or kill it altogether. But the American people can't afford that. A lack of consumer protections and a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly brought our economy to its knees, and helped cause the pain that has left millions of Americans without jobs and without homes. The reform that both parties have been working on for a year would prevent a crisis like this from happening again, and I urge the Senate to get back to work and put the interests of the country ahead of party."
....What McConnell did not mention was that, last week, he traveled alongside National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. John Cornyn (TX) to New York City for a private meeting with elite hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives. The purpose of the meeting between the top Republicans and the financial executives was to enlist "Wall Street's help" in funding Republican campaigns in the fall and killing any tough financial reform...
"...we're going to put in place new rules so that big banks and financial institutions will pay for the bad decisions they make - not taxpayers. Simply put, this means no more taxpayer bailouts...." - President Barack Obama
Senator Kit Bond (r - lame duck) and all of the republicans in the Senate signed on [pdf] to block that financial regulatory reform (you know, the lack thereof which allowed a wealthy few to almost collapse our economy by virtue of their high risk and other behaviors).
...Just the other day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans and the Chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue...
...[republican Senate Leader] McConnell's Wall Street meeting, in other words, is quickly becoming one of the central aspects of the debate. Perhaps the Minority Leader would be willing to shed some additional light on what transpired? Who, exactly, did he meet with? How much money did he collect? What did the Wall Street elites demand, specifically, and what did he promise?
I wonder what the reaction might be if Senate Dems raised the prospect of some kind of investigation into the meeting, complete with subpoenas for attendees....
President Obama called out the republican obstructionists in today's address:
"....Now, unsurprisingly, these reforms have not exactly been welcomed by the people who profit from the status quo - as well their allies in Washington. This is probably why the special interests have spent a lot of time and money lobbying to kill or weaken the bill. Just the other day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans and the Chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue.
Lo and behold, when he returned to Washington, the Senate Republican Leader came out against the common-sense reforms we've proposed. In doing so, he made the cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would somehow enable future bailouts - when he knows that it would do just the opposite. Every day we don't act, the same system that led to bailouts remains in place - with the exact same loopholes and the exact same liabilities. And if we don't change what led to the crisis, we'll doom ourselves to repeat it. That's the truth. Opposing reform will leave taxpayers on the hook if a crisis like this ever happens again...."
Rep. Todd Akin (R-2nd) reacted to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) with predictable bile. He also tried to dredge up some some stale GOP health care hash, twittering on the eve of its passage:
Did you know that the healthcare bill included a marriage penalty? A married couple making $50,000/yr will have to pay $1,650 more per year for health insurance than an unmarried couple making the same amount.
Although this claim is old news, dating from the first of the year, Akin's attempt to resurrect the meme indicates, sadly, that we may be hearing it repeated for awhile yet.
The marriage penalty Akin refers to is the mechanism the PPACA uses to structure progressive premiums for the ca. 17 million individuals who are now uninsured and who would be eligible for insurance subsidies through the exchanges. The Wall Street Journalpicked up the story from a memo circulated by the GOP, printing two articles that provided a cover of credibility as the story went viral among the wingnutagencia - just google "health care marriage penalty" and you will get a gazillion hits from all the usual suspects.
In the wake of health care reform becoming law, we have been gifted with numerous displays of Missouri's good ole boys in the Grand Old Party trying their best to establish a little street cred with the right of the right wing. So far, the displays have been confined to relatively harmless posturing (nonbinding resolutions, constitutional amendments of dubious legality, etc.). Today, however, a Missouri Senate Committee took concrete steps to make sure that the state's repressive status quo in regard to abortion continues by acting to take advantage of a provision in the federal legislation that allows states to keep the exchanges from offering abortion coverage:
The state Senate Small Business, Insurance and Industry Committee voted 5-1 Monday for legislation would ban any health insurance exchange from offering policies covering elective abortions -- even if women are willing to pay an extra premium for the coverage. The legislation now goes to the Missouri Senate.
According to Planned Parenthood's Michelle Trupiano, if this bill is passed by the Senate and signed by the Governor Nixon, none of which is out of the realm of possibility, the outlook for poorer women will be dire:
...it already is rare for Missouri women to be able to purchase an insurance policy addition for abortion coverage. So they often pay the full cost of an abortion, which she said is about $500 for a first-semester pregnancy.
For people covered through new health insurance exchanges, the Missouri legislation "leaves those particular women with no options for abortion coverage," ... .
What I want to know is where these jerks were when I wanted to keep my tax dollars out of worthless federally funded abstinence only sex education programs, or any of the Bush-era faith based initiatives that gave our tax money to groups like the Salvation Army while permitting them to prosyletize and discriminate against gays, Jews, Catholics, what-have-you, in their employment practices? Abortion is legal and the religious fanatics who oppose it should have no more standing than I do.
Representatives of the Party of No and its supporters responded in one of two ways immediately after the passage of the Senate bill on Mondayhealth care reform law - with violent rhetorical excess, or with real violence. The first characterized the GOPers in congress who competed to outdo each other's demagogic excesses in their efforts to portray this bill as an "outrage" that threatens democracy. Their tantrums arguably helped whip up the second, more violent response on the part of their out-of-control Tea Party dupes. The result? Violence and threats of violence against Democrats who had refused to be intimidated by months of implied threat.
The latest beneficiary of the Republican efforts to fan the Tea Party frenzy is Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-3rd). A coffin that had earlier figured in a Tea Party protest was left on the lawn of Carnahan's residence Tuesday night. Even KMOV reporter Matt Sczesny, who has seemed at times perhaps a little too friendly to the Tea Partiers to be considered objective (they certainly appreciate his coverage, at any rate), was moved to observe:
... the police were not involved, since it doesn't appear there was any direct threat and the coffin was empty. However, one can only imagine what may be implied by leaving a coffin on a front lawn. We all know that emotions have been running high over the health care reform debate, but this has to make you wonder where this debate is going.
Sczesny is correct - even though the Tea Party is claiming that they have been "smeared" by Carnahan and the coffin was simply part of a prayer vigil in which it symbolized the death of freedom. Viewed in the context of the the recent threats of violence, Carnahan, along with all sane Americans, should be concerned about where the delusional hysteria and bullyboy tactics of this group may take us.
The individuals, however, who ought to be most concerned are our putative Republican leaders who have been willing to play on the emotions of the looney tunes brigade for their own political purposes. As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memoobserves about the recent spate of violence:
... this didn't come from nowhere and it can't be pawned off on a few cranks. Everything that's happened over the last five days has grown from a pattern of incitement going back almost a year -- wildly hyperbolic statements, coded appeals to menacing behavior, flippant jokes about bringing firearms to political events and all the rest.
We need to contact our Republican congressional representatives and demand that they take responsibility for inciting fear and anger among their more unstable constituents, and for implicitly indicating that violence might be justified whenever individuals fail to prevail politically. Not that they'll ever own up to their role - already they are fishing around for ways to blame the victims - but they ought to hear that a few of us at least know just what they have been doing - and that we will do our best to make sure that that knowledge becomes a commonplace.
Addenda: Ezra Klein gets it right while keeping a calm, civil tongue in his head.
Todd Akin's official response to the health care reform victory is, as one might expect, shrill in the extreme. He has managed to jam almost every GOP screaming point into a few short paragraphs. Since the event that occasioned this vitriolic outburst is the passage of what is actually very moderate legislation, it might be instructive to deconstruct his florid imagery in order to figure out what Republican rage is really all about:
"Today Americans are reacquainted with the danger of an arrogant all powerful government, a deadly enemy within, a clear and present danger in Washington."
"Americans" in this context refers to Tea Partiers and corporations. "Arrogance" refers to the fact that the Democratic congress defied corporate initiated Tea Party tantrums and inept Republican legislative tactics in order to help the president fulfill one of the campaign promises that got him elected. "All powerful government" refers only to elected Democrats; when Republicans lie in order to force-march the country into deficit-busting wars, they are patriots. "A deadly enemy within" means that these same Democrats threaten a resurgent Republican hegemony, since they pose "a clear and present danger" to the GOP by revealing its sabre rattling to be nothing more than empty noise.
"In spite of nationwide opposition socialized medicine is being forced down our throats. That medicine is toxic to freedom. But freedom dies hard in America."
Akin considers "nationwide opposition" to be the 43% of the respondents to a recent CNN poll that disapprove of the health care reform because it is "too liberal" - although, if truth be told, many of those probably only disapprove because they have bought into the Republican misinformation campaign, and will no doubt be pleasantly surprised to find that the passage of Health Care reform has not, in fact, killed Blaine Luetkemeyer's father. Akin clearly does not consider worthy of consideration the other 52% who approve of the legislation, or who think it is not liberal enough.
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 21, 2010; 7:01 PM
Congressional Republicans rallied Tea Party activists to oppose the health-care legislation on the verge of being approved by Congress...
...As a group of several hundred protesters on the lawn of the Capitol shouted "No! No! No!" "Nancy, you will burn in hell for this!" and "Kill the bill!" rank-and-file Republican lawmakers came out to the balcony off the House floor in the midst of a series of procedural votes. Two different trios of GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Tom Latham (Iowa) and Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.), waved signs with the words "Kill" "The" and "Bill" as the crowd cheered....
As Tommy Sowers, the Democratic Party candidate in the 8th Congressional District has pointed out, "Our district has over 22% uninsured." You'd think the incumbent republican would care about that, wouldn't you? Unless they had friends elsewhere.
As we were putting together this post we received the following statement from Tommy Sowers' campaign:
The health care reform express seems to be underway at last - and Republicans are throwing frothing-at-the-mouth tantrums that seem to include the type of impotent threat that characterize bad losers everywhere. Consider Tom Coburn's promise:
If you voted no and you vote yes and you lose your election and you think any nomination to a federal position isn't going to be held in the Senate, I've got news for you, it's going to be held
Not really much of a threat, though, since, as Faiz Shakir of ThinkProgress observes, Coburn is describing a unlikely situation that could only ever affect a small number of people.
"We didn't stop it, but now we have their names. Today, 222 Democrats are on record for supporting the unconstitutional "Slaughter Solution," which will allow them to pass the Senate health care bill without actually voting on it.
Apart from the hypocritical mischaracterization of the the "deem and pass" maneuver to which he is referring (since is in his fourteenth House term, he has to have supported the "deeming" process that Republicans used 36 times in 2005 and 2006) - I guess he means that his big, bad Republcan gang will make Democrats pay for doing what they are paid to do - watch out for the welfare of the people.
Well, Dan Burton, I've got news for you - we can all play at that game. Looking at the roll call, it seems that the members of the Missouri delegation that voted to move things along are Lacy Clay (D-1st); Russ Carnahan (D-3rd) Emanual Cleaver (D-5th). It is worth noting that Ike Skelton (D-4th), although he has indicated that he will not vote for the final bill, joined his fellow Democrats today to allow the process to go ahead - he ought to get some credit for that at least.
It would be great if these reliable Democrats (even, this time, Skelton) got some encouragement. You know what I mean - maybe send some thank you emails, letters or phone calls - or even a little donation, either now or when health care reform, God willing, is a done deal. On the other hand, I am sure nobody would take it amiss if anyone wanted to to send a few coals to the usual suspects in the Party of No: Todd Akin (R-2nd), Roy Blunt (R-7th), Jo Ann Emerson (R-8th), Sam Gravaes (R-6th), and last among the least, Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-9th).
Former state representative Gene Lang (r) (who was defeated by Democratic challenger Deleta Williams in 1990) had a letter to the editor in today's Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal:
With 20 years legislative experience, I cringe when I hear the term, "up or down." The legislative process is a messy maze of rules that take divergent people and allow them to pass laws that reasonably govern all. True, you can't turn the world upside down in a year, but most would agree that is a good thing. When the term up or down is used, someone is trying to force something down the throat of the taxpayer, and the reason for that is that it hasn't been worked through properly, or even worse, it doesn't carry the support of the voters...
Uh, I don't recall a similar letter to the editor when republicans used the same terminology.
...There is plenty of health care reform that could, and should, be quickly agreed to by rational legislators, but those weren't allowed to be pursued...
What color is the sky in your world? Rational republican legislators? I spent the day in Jefferson City today and listened to republican tenthers in debate. That ain't rational.
I am sure that I am not the only person who is puzzled by Tea Partier Liz Lauber's primary challenge against Todd Akin, who is, after all, ranked by the National Journal as the 11th most conservative member of the House of Representatives. Makes you wonder what Lauber is really all about.
Well wonder no more. According to an article in the rightwing rag, The Washington Times, Lauber decided to run for Congress after her representative voted for the TARP bailout. Of course, she is either confused or her representative at the time was someone other than Akin, since he was one of the Republicans to vote against the bailout. Hasn't stopped her from giving him a primary challenge though.
Lauber is, it seems, anxious that nobody regard her candidacy as simply an exercise in anti-government bile. She is at pains to show that she wants "not just to stand against government, but to stand for something." To that end she and fellow Tea Partier, Phil Troyer, who is running for office in Indiana, have decided to copy Newt Gringrich and present voters with a Tea Party flavored Compact with America, the principles of which are about what one would expect:
-Passing real tax reform, such as a flat tax or fair tax.
-Requiring a vote of Congress to approve each federal agency regulation.
.-Banning earmark recipients from making campaign donations
-Prohibiting federal ownership interests in private companies.
-Requiring bills to be posted online five days in advance of a vote.
-Performing a federalism and constitutionality analysis of all bills.
-Voting for appropriations bills that reduce spending by at least 5 percent.
-Prohibiting federal funding of abortion.
-Offering a constitutional amendment for term limits.
All Mostly questionable provisions that should be very popular with Tea Party zealots - and nothing that Todd Akin would have a problem signing onto, with the exception of the term limits requirement. So the question remains, why would fringers in the 2nd district vote for Liz Lauber? Anti-government bile?
Update - having 2nd thoughts: As I look at the "compact" again, it strikes me that the third provision above - banning earmark recipients from making campaign donations - might be the source of difference between Lauber and Akin. Could it be that a group, initiated by astroturfers to fight health care reform and rational energy policy, has actually taken on its own life - apart from serving as an outlet for every variety of right-wing battiness, that is? In spite of their silly rhetoric and "constitutional" craziness, do they actually get it when it comes to corruption? If so, it could be really bad news for the Republicans who hope to march to victory in the Tea Party parade.
Remember how Tom Sawyer managed to get out of the onerous job of painting Aunt Polly's fence? He just employed a little misleading rhetoric and persuaded his friends that it was the best fun ever, and if they would only pay him for the privilege, he would surrender the paint brush and let them paint to their hearts content.
I have vivid memories of elderly people on deserted streets who, despite having acres of space in which to pass me as I hugged the side of the street, instead reduced their speed to a crawl and made exasperated faces and gestures as they followed me slowly along the street. Or the teen-age girls who yelled obscenities at me as I followed prescribed procedure for making a left-hand turn in traffic. This didn't happen too often in Palo Alto, and the perpetrators were not people whom one would accord much credibility. In retrospect, however, their rather irrational sense of entitlement suggests that they might have been just the type of folks who would be at home at a Tea Party - which could explain our Republican pol's concern for their druthers rather than those of bike riders.
FiredUp! 
Rep. Todd Akin (R-2nd) 
Representatives of the Party of No and its supporters responded in one of two ways immediately after the passage of the 
The latest beneficiary of the Republican efforts to fan the Tea Party frenzy is Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-3rd). A coffin that had earlier figured in a Tea Party protest 
Todd Akin's official 