Among the misbegotten Democrats who voted with my own right-wing congressman, Ozark Billy Long, and other extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives to, without precedent, hold Attorney General Eric Holder in “contempt,” was none other than Dan Boren, who represents Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District, which is just west of Joplin.
Since Boren, who is a board member of the NRA (which “scored” the vote on Holder in order to intimidate pusillanimous politicians), has decided to retire from the House to take a job with the Chickasaw Nation (fittingly as its “president of corporate development”), this will likely be the last time I can salute him for the absolute phony Democrat he is.
If Boren were on fire, I wouldn’t pucker up and piss on him. He voted with Republicans almost all the time, and was a more reliable vote for John Boehner than some Republicans. Oh, I forgot. Boren voted with Tea Party Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act in January of 2011, after having voted against it at its birth.
It’s one thing to represent yourself as a “moderate” Democrat, which in Eastern Oklahoma—the poorest area in a godforsaken blood-red state— is about as much as a majority of those folks can tolerate. It’s another to represent yourself as a moderate Democrat when really you are a conservative, corporate Republican.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
JDHight
/ June 29, 2012I am sick of politicians from both sides who leave Congress to enrich themselves. They spent years prostituting themselves to corporate interests and receive their unjust rewards for their despicable actions. It is time that the public makes their representatives accountable to them and not corporate America, including our own Roy Blunt, prostitute-in-chief to K Street. He he been bought, paid for, and own by corporate America. Just look at his dismal voting record.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ June 29, 2012Jim,
I did hear Blunt the other day on MSNBC use the word “compromise,” in the context of “both sides” have become to demanding to get everything they want. It was the first time I heard a prominent Republican talk that way, although he did so rather reluctantly.
Duane
LikeLike
Angelfire
/ June 29, 2012My departed dad used to tell me, “a Southern Democrat is like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest…”. He was right. You can NEVER count on them for a vote, to help with a fillabuster, anything really…. except to eat, crap, and help the Republicans. They are in essence, Republicans.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ June 29, 2012As much as I hate to admit it, we need even the Milquetoast Democrats to gain a majority in the House (and to some degree in the Senate), but sometimes it is hard to take their Milquetoast-ness. I fancy sometimes that the reason liberal Democrats are not as successful as they should be in winning hearts and minds is because they are afraid to stand up and say they are liberals and damned proud of it. Some among us shrink from that term and it is time we took it back from the Limbaughs and Hannitys who have bastardized it.
LikeLike
Jim Wheeler
/ June 29, 2012The CBS program 60 Minutes did an excellent segment a few years ago on the power the NRA holds over members of Congress. It is truly phenomenal and it is real. It works, I think, because the NRA knows how to use single-issue demagoguery at the visceral level. “Gun rights are good and anyone who wants to limit them is bad.”
The Tea Party knows this too and I predict that in the wake of yesterday’s decision by the Roberts Court we will now hear for the next four months a steady drumbeat of “ObamaCare means raising your taxes!” (Never mind that only 6% of the population is likely to be personally affected by that.)
No politician ever succeeds with a complex argument, and that goes double for Oklahoma. And, come to think of it, for Southwest Missouri too.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ June 29, 2012No doubt we will have more angry, nutty folks running around in 18th century costumes sporting powdered wigs and saying dumb things like, “Party like it’s the Stone Age!” That part of it depresses me greatly, as it is not exactly an advertisement for America’s intellectual superiority.
In any case, like Grover Norquist and the whole anti-tax nonsense, the NRA is doing great damage to the country and I see no way, no way in hell, to stop any of them for very long. They play a long game, sort of like the DNA in cockroaches plays along evolutionary game, I suppose.
As for the public absorbing complex arguments, I’m sure that has always been true to some degree, but I am sure that with the many distractions in our culture today, it is probably more true than ever, this side of the history of mass communication.
As I say, all of it is really quite depressing.
Duane
LikeLike
King Beauregard
/ June 30, 2012Two things that may make you feel better:
1) The up-and-coming generation is less given to racism than its predecessors. LBJ figured he’d lost the South for a generation or two, but maybe not this one.
2) The up-and-coming generation is pretty heavily appalled by the excesses and bigotries of the Religious RIght. This is considered a crisis in evangelical circles.
So both the Southern Strategy and the Culture Wars are starting to wear out their welcome. The NRA’s not going to see quite the same support from people that aren’t afraid of a black uprising or a Godless totalitarian state.
LikeLike
Jim Wheeler
/ June 30, 2012King B’s link deserves a look, folks. I recommend you not miss it.
LikeLike
King Beauregard
/ June 30, 2012Here, take a look at this:
http://rachelheldevans.com/win-culture-war-lose-generation-amendment-one-north-carolina
In some areas, good sense is starting to reassert itself.
LikeLike
ansonburlingame
/ June 29, 2012Wait a minute, Jim. 6% of our population is about 18 million people.
Today’s Globe reported that somewhere around 50 million folks in America currently have no HC insurance. That amounts to around 18% or so. As well, those 50 million people without HC insurance today are now going to have to purchase such insurance (maybe a couple of thousand dollars per year) or pay a “tax” amounting to roughly the same amount of money.
Now how do you think many of those 50 million people will vote in NOv 2012? As well younger and poorer (or both) Americans were a huge part of the Obama’s base in 2008 as well. Just “swing” say 10 million of those votes to the GOP and you have a GOP landslide in the making.
If Duane achieves the obvious goal of voting OUT the “blue dog” Dems, such as Boren, I wonder what the Dem Party will have left in Congress, both Houses of Congress?
And like it or not Claire is going to be working very hard to paint herself as such a Dem over the coming 4 months. Otherwise she is a goner, politically. Duane is also now critical of her attempts to do so in a recent blog. Well he can gripe about her all he likes but my guess is he and you will still vote for her.
But I agree that I have seen, of late, that 6% figure you used. Geoff uses it all the time to characterize the percentage of ‘radical left” voters and members of Congress today. Whether true or not, I have no idea.
Anson
LikeLike
Jim Wheeler
/ June 29, 2012You’re right, Anson, my comment was vague. By “personally affected” I was referring estimates of people who were likely to be paying the penalty of the individual mandate rather than purchase health insurance. When I searched just now I found estimates varying from 2% to 6% for that statistic. Here’s a link to one that quotes the Congressional Budget Office on the matter and which includes this statement:
Bottom line though, the individual mandate is not the villain it is demonized to be. One would think that the GOP might be pleased at the idea that tens of millions of people who never did so before would finally paying to indemnify their own healthcare risks. But one would be wrong on that because hatred of Obama tops all other concerns.
LikeLike
ansonburlingame
/ June 30, 2012Jim,
I absolutely agree that trying to predict the numbers related to people having to “fork over” money than they had previously spent, how much of that money will be to now purchase insurance, how much will be paid in taxes (penalties), etc. is not easy or accurate now.
But the simple fact remains that about 50 Million people are nowl going to be faced with a significant financial decision in their personal lives to the tune of several thousand dollars.
As well, some of those people will be eligable for new federal “assistance” (money to purchase “pool” insurance. I don’t think that money had been included in any budgets or Congressional spending authorizations, yet but now it will have to be considered.
Progressives will focus on the “good” such new spending my individuals or the government will accomplish. Conservatives will wonder where the money will come from.
But I do know this. If a voter is faced with being REQUIRED to spend more of their own money (taxes or purchasing HC insurance) due to the force of government, well some of those voters are not going to vote for those imposing such force.
The GOP will do all in its power to emphasize that point and progressive will do the same to counter it. And here we go, again.
And simply because the oneous of that indiviudal financial decision on the young/poorer in America, I feel comfortable in calling that regressive “force” or taxation.
Anson
LikeLike