Roy Blunt, a United States Senator from my state, is a part of Republican leadership. He is supposed to be one of those “adults” in the Republican Party who is anchored to reality.
Ha.
Blunt voted, along with most Republicans, to make it possible for terrorists to get killing machines known as assault weapons. As you will see, he is a favorite of the NRA. And he is a walking—and tweeting—example of what is wrong, not only with his party, but with the entire conservative establishment and, if he holds onto his senate seat this November, what is wrong with the state of Missouri.
Look at this tweet his reelection campaign crapped out on Monday:
There are other, similar, disgusting tweets from that account, all designed to persuade voters here in Missouri that our Secretary of State, Democrat Jason Kander, who is running for Blunt’s senate seat, is soft on “radical” Islamic terrorism.
Except, you know what? Jason Kander is a veteran. And he’s not just any old veteran. He’s a veteran of the Afghanistan war. Here is his return tweet:
It turns out, as The Kansas City Star reported, that Roy Blunt is a chicken hawk. He had his chance to serve his country with the firearms he so loves, but instead, like a lot of Republican library-soldiers, decided student deferments were the way to go:
In a news story posted online Wednesday morning, The Star reported Blunt received three draft deferments while a college student in the late 1960s.
He didn’t just “receive” them. He asked for them. And three draft deferments? He must have been proud of those, right? Wrong:
Blunt’s office did not disclose the deferments in 2015, when the newspaper specifically asked Blunt’s office about the senator’s draft history.
Well, that’s understandable. He was protecting his future bravery, no doubt. Protecting his abstract—and vote-getting—fight against “radical Islamic terrorism.”
So, what is the campaign’s explanation for Blunt’s failure to disclose? Simple: old age or bureaucratic red tape or, hell, Alzheimers:
Blunt’s staff said this week that poor memories and difficult-to-obtain draft records may have contributed to the confusion over the senator’s deferments.
Confusion. That’s it! He was confused about not wanting to get his ass shot at in Vietnam. Very understandable. It is painfully obvious how one could forget or get confused about that.
Truth is, I don’t know what to say about someone who attacks his political opponent in such a way as to suggest Jason Kander is squishy about fighting terrorism when Jason Kander actually risked his life to, uh, fight terrorism. Maybe you have words for such an asswipe. Share them.
In any case, back to Blunt’s vote on allowing terrorists here in America access to killing machines. According to a Washington Post analysis,
Sen. Roy Blunt has received more campaign donations from the National Rifle Association than any other current member of Congress…
I don’t know if that’s true. But if it is, that means Blunt is not only in bed with the gun (manufacturer) lobby, but he is on top. If you know what I mean.
Hey, at least humping the NRA and gun manufacturers is safer than dodging bullets in Vietnam. Or Afghanistan. No confusion about that.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Tige Gibson
/ June 21, 2016People are starting to learn, at least those people who supported Sanders, that money alone is not required to win elections. Like gun legislation itself, if you believe that the side putting more money into campaigns will always win, you are just setting up your own self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s possible to win with less than half the money of your opponent if your cause is just and people believe you can win. People are more likely to vote if they think they can win and less likely to vote if they don’t feel their candidate is just.
Ironically, Trump himself is spending very little on campaigning and a lot of what he does spend is wasted on trivialities or funneled back into his own businesses. Doing that he was able to beat opponents with party backing. So even though he has money he proves that he doesn’t have to use his money to win, he just needs racist suckers to believe in him. And in the end his loss will be no big loss because he never actually wanted to do the job.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ June 23, 2016He hasn’t needed much money up until now because cable news provided him with constant, and free, coverage. Now he has to share that coverage with Hillary Clinton. It is true that money alone does not make a winner. But money is absolutely necessary to do what needs to be done in a close election. Getting people registered to vote and getting them to vote is labor intensive, mostly done with volunteers but organized and supervised by paid staffers. And data gathering and analysis is costly, but necessary for targeting and micro-targeting in swing states. The infrastructure of a campaign is damned expensive, but in order to squeeze every last vote out of a precinct you can, you need a solid infrastructure.
As for Trump never actually wanting to do the job, that idea has been floated for a while now. But it doesn’t really matter whether he wants to do the job or not. At this point it would absolutely cripple his ego to lose in a landslide. He at least has to make it close or he won’t be able to live with the shame. A landslide loss is something he can’t hide, like he has some of his bad business deals. My problem is that, as I have said all along, he will start with around 45% of the electorate and who knows what happens after that. The third party factor could be much bigger this year than in the last several elections, which means the winning candidate might get less than 50% of the vote. The Libertarian ticket appears stronger than usual and the Green Party, because Bernie won’t come out and discourage his voters from flocking to it, will siphon some percentage of votes from Hillary.
LikeLike
henrygmorgan
/ June 22, 2016Duane: I believe that no issue pisses off vets more than chickenhawks commenting on warfare or courage. At least even George W. served, unlike his Secretary Cheney, who ” had other priorities.” No doubt saving his ass was high among those priorities, thereby preserving himself for the later arduous business of joining in sending thousands of others into the deadly business of war. I don’t believe that everyone should serve in the military, but I do ardently believe that those who didn’t should not put themselves in the position of criticizing those who did, such as Blunt, Caldwell, and Trump. Trump, of course, felt that his Military School was the equivalent of my Marine Corps service, Jim Wheeler’s entire career service in the Navy, and the service of so many others who chose to serve in the defense of our country. I’m sure that The Donald felt himself to be in greatest peril as he gallantly fought in the Battle of the Lunch Room in the War of Military School. Those forks can be dangerous!
Bud
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ June 23, 2016Hilarious!
But it is a serious subject when someone like Blunt tries, in a rather devious way, to get away with insinuating that a former Afghanistan war veteran is soft on terrorism. I think Kander actually went a little easy on him. I would have let him have it with both fists.
Duane
LikeLike
Jim Wheeler
/ June 22, 2016Vietnam war conscription ended in 1973, 43 years ago. That means men who were 17 then are now age 60, so I have to wonder if the majority of the voting public will have any kind of visceral reaction to Blunt’s hypocrisy?
The all-volunteer military is much more efficient but the change was culturally profound. War is not at all what it used to be, and that is why a president Trump would be almost certain to use it. Probably Hillary too, but less so.
LikeLike
R. Duane Graham
/ June 23, 2016Just this morning, I heard a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, Sean Duffy, arguing with CNN’s Chris Cuomo about the sit-in in the House over the gun issue. Duffy kept trying to blame Obama for not doing enough about “radical Islamic terrorism” and ISIS, saying our generals have stated that we could wipe out ISIS in a matter of weeks, or something like that. Cuomo, to his credit, tried to explain to him that, yes, we could probably do that, but it would require “boots on the ground” and, by the way, you congressmen won’t even have a vote to allow an authorization of military force for him to do what he is doing now, much less send in combat troops. Duffy, remarkably, said Obama has the power right now and doesn’t need any further authorization, and, even more remarkably, said that the AUMF proposal that Obama sent Congress actually restricted his power to use force and that Duffy wanted Obama to have the greater authority to, essentially, send thousands of our troops into combat.
I said all that to say this: It is people like Duffy, who is now on board with Trump, who not only believes that a President Trump (God, I hate writing that) has the power to start a full-scale, U.S. troop-led war in Iraq and Syria, but would absolutely encourage him to do so. Oh, by the way, Duffy, like Trump, never served a day in the military. Scary shit.
On the Hillary side, I just don’t see that many Democrats who would be urging her to escalate our presence in Iraq or Syria, at least to the point of putting in tens of thousands of combat troops. At least I hope not.
Duane
LikeLike