Most of you have probably heard by now about the comments of GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is running for reelection to her House seat in Minnesota. After suggesting that Obama has “anti-American views” she said:
“I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America. I would love to see an exposé like that.”
Thing is, it’s not 1950 anymore. The House Un-American Activities Committee is in the dustbin of history, where it belongs. Americans, by and large, are sick and tired of Republican scare, divide, and conquer tactics. The folks I know back in Jersey don’t tend to respond well when Gov. Palin, the GOP’s pick for the future, says in North Carolina that she likes visiting the “real America,” praising the “pro-America areas of this great nation.”
(Palin apologized last night in a CNN interview, saying she didn’t intend to suggest other parts of the country were less patriotic or less American. “You know,” she said, ”when I go to these rallies and we see the patriotism just shining through these people’s faces and the Vietnam veterans wearing their hats so proudly and they have tears in their eyes as we sing our national anthem and it is so inspiring and I say that this is true America, you get it.” She added: “I certainly don’t want that interpreted as one area being more patriotic or more American than another. If that’s the way it has come across, I apologize.” Honestly, no, Gov. Palin – I don’t get it. At the rallies, you were clearly using patriotism as a wedge — between people, between voters, between red states and blue states – and I judge your apology last night to be further obfuscation and incomplete, at best.)
But I digress.
Bachmann had been on a glide-path to relection. As the Washington Post reports, after her McCarthy-esque comments, her little known opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg raised $1 million:
The backlash from Bachmann’s remarks gave Tinklenberg enough donations to quadruple his television advertising, prompted the nonpartisan Cook Political Report to flip its take on the race from “likely Republican” to “tossup” and inspired a Republican who lost to Bachmann in the party’s primary to launch a write-in campaign.
My wife and I felt it was important to join this effort to kick Bachmann out of the halls of Congress. We gave a donation to Tinklenberg this morning. You can too, by clicking here.
And we didn’t stop there.
Because in North Carolina, Republican Robin Hayes riled up a crowd Saturday by channeling Bachmann, saying, “”liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.”
Ahhhh, he finally said it. Not only am I myself lazy, Godless, and treasonous, but I hate all those on the other side of that line.
Of course, moments later, he denied ever saying it. And when a reporter quoted him, he kept right on denying it. (Check out this incredible string of updates from Politico’s The Crypt.) In fact, he denied it right up until the point in time when an audiotape surfaced, confirming that he’d said exactly what he was quoted as saying. When that happened, he suddenly claimed that he was perplexed that it had come out of his mouth, because he’d actually been “trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible.”
That climb-down is almost Palin-esqe.
What happens to these Republicans when they get in front of the mic that they say things apparently diametrically opposed to what they really believe? Are they not aware that people now have video recorders on their cell phones? Do they really have the hubris to spew division in one breath, and deny their very words in the next? Do they not recognize the damage they cause?
Words create worlds. It’s in the Torah. Once uttered, words can’t just be put magically put back in a bottle.
Which is why my wife and I this morning made a small donation to Larry Kissell, Hayes’ challenger. And as the Post reports:
Kissell is making his second run at Hayes after coming within 329 votes of unseating the veteran lawmaker in 2006. This time, Kissell is better funded, as the national Democratic Party is putting more than $1 million into his race.
You can help, too, by clicking here.
Inspired, I decided to go for a trifecta.
I’m sure you all remember what happened to Georgia Sen. Max Cleland. Here’s a refresher, from the NY Times:
Six years ago, Democratic Senator Max Cleland was defeated by Republican Saxby Chambliss, who ran ads accusing Mr. Cleland of not being patriotic enough and of being soft on Osama Bin Laden.
The thing is, Mr. Cleland is a decorated Vietnam veteran, who lost an arm and two legs fighting for his country …
It was dirty politics at its dirtiest. Mr. Cleland, who gets around with the help of a wheelchair, struggled mightily every day with his war wounds. When he was campaigning and making television appearances, it took him an hour and a half to get dressed. But his injuries did not stop the ads — or some of Mr. Chambliss’s supporters from saying even worse.
After his loss in 2002, Mr. Cleland said he underwent treatment for depression.
Well, Saxby’s back on the campaign trail in what used to be the solidly Republican Georgia, asking for people’s vote. He’s again running harsh attack ads. But his opponent Jim Martin, ala Obama, is fighting back. And this time, Georgia voters are telling Chambliss, Not so fast. As the Times reports:
Until recently, nobody thought State Representative Jim Martin, Senator Chambliss’s Democratic opponent, could raise much of a challenge. Mr. Martin is not a flashy guy. He has the demeanor of a deacon, a far cry from Georgia’s history of Talmadges and other flamboyant politicians.
But polls have started to show Georgians almost split on this race (some are even suggesting that Mr. Martin is ahead). And the national Democratic Party has moved money in over the last few weeks.
We gave a small donation to Martin this morning, to let him know we’re pulling for him in Akron, Ohio. (You can too, by clicking here.)
Something’s happening. It’s happening all across the country. The kinds of jingoistic attacks that seem encoded in the GOP DNA — attacks that instilled fear in my heart four years ago — are backfiring, from Georgia, to North Carolina, to Minnesota, to the places in between.
Something’s happening, and it has to do with the fact that we are, at last, sick and tired of being told who is different from us and why we should hate and mistrust them.
Something’s happening. And I think it’s safe to say that whatever it is, exactly, it gathered steam four years ago, when Barack Obama stood up at the DNC, looked over the dais, straight into millions of living rooms across the nation, and said:
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.
Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too:
We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States.
We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?
Yes, we do.
Tags: Chambliss, Cleland, Elwyn Tinklenberg, Jim Martin, Larry Kissell, Michele Bachmann, Palin, Robin Hayes
bravo – it almost makes me hopeful
Josh, you’ve outdone yourself. This is a brilliant piece of writing and in your honor Barb and I are making donations to the good folks you mentioned.
You asked me to report about the events I attended at which Governor Howard Dean spoke. Here it is:
I saw him speak to a group of about 100 students at the University of Dayton in the afternoon and he was wonderful, especially when he talked about Obama representing the under 35 generation, which has grown up with much greater experience (or exposure) to diverse groups and is much more accepting of differences. He pointed out that the Republicans have been using divisive politics for many years and have made various groups the target at different times, such that each of these groups (blacks, gays, Hispanics) has no strong reason to remain with them. They are still using the same tactic, only now it’s ‘real Americans’ versus us fake Americans, the patriotic parts of the country (small towns, etc) vs the unpatriotic parts (NY, Philadelphia, Washington, California, Northern Virginia, etc).
Dean pointed out that young voters looking at the lineup of all white male Republican primary contenders would not have recognized the diverse world they live in and in which they feel comfortable, whereas if they looked at the Democrats running they would have seen a much more diverse group which included a woman, an African-American, and and Hispanic. He thinks this presages a very successful future for the Democratic party as the under-35 generation moves into the future. He urged everyone to vote early as he expects a massive turnout, but he told them that if they do vote early all they have earned is a grade of D, that if they want to get a higher grade they have to bring three friends with them to vote, and if they want to get an A they have to work on the campaign, even if only for a couple of hours.
Dean became very inspirational when he talked about what the world has lost due to the blundering foreign policy under Bush – hope and trust in America. He asked the crowd how many were of Native American heritage; he then pointed out that everyone else was an immigrant or descendant of immigrants – and that the reason they had come here was because of the hope they had that America would provide a better life for them and their families. He said that he didn’t feel that he, or any American, was any better or different than any other person anywhere in the world, but that our country was the best, even though we had made serious mistakes at times, because of its founding principles and it’s repeated return to striving to live up to those ideals when given the proper leadership – and that Obama is the leader we need in these times to bring us together and to inspire the world to trust and respect us.
At last night’s fundraiser, Barb, your cousin Rachel (who with three days off from law school came to Ohio to work for two days) and I happened to be by the door when Dean came in to the room, so we were the first to talk with him. Turns out that Barb and he were in the Columbia School of General Studies within a year or so of each other and had the same professor. I complimented him on the 50 state strategy and he told me that he (and others) feel that if they could have gotten Kerry to go to the less urban parts of Ohio he probably would have taken the state and the election. The goal is not necessarily to win a Republican leaning district but to close the gap so that the overall total is more likely to go in our favor.
Rachel’s friend Sam came over last night (he also came from NYC to work in the Dayton office and is staying till the election). At one point he said that the area that I’ve been working in (Centerville & Washington Township) went for Bush 74% – 24% and that the goal was to make it 65-35. They now feel that we may get as high as 60-40!
Back to Dean: he covered some of the same ground he did at the afternoon speech but focused also on healthcare (the fundraiser was organized by doctors at Dayton Children’s Medical Center so the audience had a high proportion of doctors) and all the questions he later took were on this topic. He said something that Mom found very reassuring: if Obama is able to implement his plan, it will mean that some portion of the population (namely those who can’t afford private insurance or can’t get it) will take the government plan (which he knows will be cheaper – possibly 30% cheaper – than private plans based on his experience in Vermont). He expects that gradually others will migrate to the government plan and that, over time, this will become the dominant provider of insurance. He noted that this is a much better way to get to universal coverage because it will happen over time, the 87% of the country which is insured will not feel threatened that they will lose what they have for some unknown plan, there will not be the disruption and problems which would occur should a new system be implemented all at once, and it provides the opportunity to work out the kinks with a smaller population. He said he didn’t know who had come up with this approach but he called it brilliant.
Lee Fisher, Ohio’s Lt. Governor, also was in attendance but only spoke briefly.
The event raised over $50,000 for the campaign and also led to the release of a letter of endorsement for Obama’s insurance plan by a large number of physicians.
drdad,
Great story and it sounds like a wonderful and very successful event. Mazel Tov and well done!
ND, great to see you giving. A few days ago I went on orangeto blue and made a bunch of small doantions to down ticket races and to equality for all in CA. I then summed them up and that is what I gave Obama. Ended up being a modest sum, more than I had intended, but importnat and necessary.
Of Jewish interest Dennnis Shulman (in NJ) needs support as well. You can give on the O to B page linked above.
Loyal
Loyal
drdad–
GREAT point about health care. I always thought that was what Obama was sayign all along — control costs, make it politicaly palatable, implement it over time. Seems like a winning approach to me.
And, thank you for this amazing post! Wow — sounds like the Dean event was inspirational, to say nothing of important financially. I think his might have been one of the most important takeaways for me: “if they do vote early all they have earned is a grade of D, that if they want to get a higher grade they have to bring three friends with them to vote, and if they want to get an A they have to work on the campaign, even if only for a couple of hours.”
We have to earn our A’s!
Loyal,
I will check out orangetoblue and the Dennis Shulman race — sounds like another worthy and important cause.
For those who haven’t seen it, Loyal sent me this this morning …
http://www.bigtenpoll.org/
My Obama minutes.
Gave some/more to:
Darcy Burner (WA-08)
Scott Kleeb (NE-Sen)
Mark Begich (AK-Sen)
Judy Baker (MO-09)
Annette Taddeo (FL-18)
Dennis Shulman (NJ-05)
Bob Lord (AZ-03)
and matched that with a bit more to
Barack Obama (President)
via via Orange to blue
and allowed Act Blue to send out an email solicitation to family and friends — ouch.
Give y’all.
I also wrote a diary today on Daily Kos Loyal’s diary: preventing future voter suppression.
Read it y’all.
Loyal