CORE PROGRESSIVE MESSAGE:   WE BUILD AMERICA ON A STRONG FOUNDATION, ONE PERSON AT A TIME.

“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion,  and  in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas.”   John F. Kennedy,  September 14, 1960 speech in New York City.

Progressives believe in the dignity of every human being and will rebuild our country from the bottom up. Healthy, educated people can take care of themselves and, when given the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, will create new technologies and business opportunities for themselves and others. A society, just like a tall building, needs a firm foundation or it will crumble.

Progressives believe that strong families and communities are intrinsically valuable, not just for the emotional rewards people feel from belonging to a caring society, but for the stability a strong community provides for economic innovation and advancement toward prosperity.

Progressives believe that the benefits of economic production should be shared by those who actually do the work and produce the wealth, not just by shareholders and top executives.

Progressives believe that the moral mission of government includes the protection and empowerment of citizens.  Protection includes education of all of its citizens,  defense against inhumane working conditions, medical care when needed,  access to safe food, air and water,  and a national defense and intelligence infrastructure commensurate with changing world conditions.

Conservatives and progressives operate from very different world views and with different cognitive mazeways.  Conservatives operate from an authoritarian belief system that stresses following orders rather than following our individual dreams.  They stress  punishment rather than rehabilitation.  They demand accountability from teachers but not from hedge fund managers.  They reject progress toward a sustainable environment because they would rather shift the cost of pollution onto the citizens than make the polluters pay.  They believe that government has no business helping individuals stay healthy or even to have a roof over their heads.

Conservatives, especially the Corpublicans running the country at this point in time believe that empowering a tiny portion of the citizens at the top of the income scale by shifting wealth up to them from the working and middle class will create jobs. There is no evidence that a CEO making $11 million a year plus stock options and bonuses creates jobs. In fact, from what we have seen over the last two  years, the incentive is just the opposite. Corporations and business owners have cut jobs to improve their bottom line despite sitting on mountains of cash and enjoying high profits. In the conservative worldview, workers are just one more expense to cut any way possible.

When people are treated like trash and thrown out in the street, they lose self-respect and faith in the future.  Poverty, homelessness, medical emergencies cause stress on the entire society, but those suffering foreclosure and joblessness pay the highest price.  This is not fair.  The current recession was caused by greedy, reckless money managers who gambled with our life savings.  Now the Corpublicans say we all need to share the pain of reducing the national deficit.  They played and we paid. Like vultures, they circle in the air waiting to suck the lifeblood out of the American people and pick what tiny shreds of dignity we still have.  They won’t be happy until America is a third world nation and we will beg them for any job at any salary just to stay alive.   Corporations have no national loyalty.  Their goal is infinite profit for a few at the expense of the many.    Progressives are rallying to the defense of the defenseless.   We can do better and we deserve better.

Since it is popular these days to reference the U.S. Constitution, let’s remember the Preamble we all learned in grade school.   WE are “the people,” not the corporations.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Progressive Democrats of St. Louis

January 7, 2011

Previous posting:

Susan Montee’s plans for the party, Part 1

In case you don’t know how we got four years of Baby Blunt in 2004 instead  of Claire, it happened partly because of how the Democratic party was organized–and I use that word “organized” with one raised eyebrow. The party has usually been simply an extension of the campaign of the highest elected official, so in ’04 that meant that it was run at the behest and for the benefit of Gov. Holden. Then McCaskill beat him in the primary. Since the party organization that year was full of Holden volunteers, Claire depended on the Kerry organization for workers. Three weeks before the election, Kerry pulled out of Missouri, leaving Claire without any boots on the ground. She lost by a little less than three percent.

So when she ran for the Senate two years later, she did the smart thing: she made the party self sustaining, separate from the highest elected Dem official, and put Roger Wilson in charge (for no salary). He set about fundraising for the party and telling Missourians what Democrats stood for. Those were the days when Jack Cardetti badgered members of the Missouri press daily to print the Democratic point of view.

But after Wilson left in 2007, the party reverted to arm-of-the-highest-elected-official status and has gradually turned into a nonentity. This last cycle it did next to nothing to get an effective message out either to party members or to the populace in general. Furthermore, the party is broke. Susan Montee, the new chairman, hopes to change the dismal performance and the financial picture. At Rea Kleeman’s condo in St. Louis week before last, she discussed her plans with a group of activists who want to improve the quality of the message Missouri Democrats put out and who want to put one out–which would be a refreshing change.

Montee talks to Rea Kleeman and Marty Walsh

That group, Progressive Dems–STL (it adopted its new name at the Sat. Jan. 8th meeting) was pleased to hear what Montee plans. For starters, she wants the party to be independent of the top elected official again, in this case Nixon. And she points that, oddly enough, the lack of campaign finance limits makes doing so more practical. When the governor was limited to taking $1250 from a given individual, people who wanted to give him more routed the money through the party coffers. Since that is no longer necessary, no state official needs to tie the party to his apron strings.

Montee wants Democrats to see her getting our message out effectively, and she figures that when they realize that is happening, they’ll be willing to contribute to the party. She’ll have to work from the ground up, though. Here’s how pitiful the party organization is: there isn’t even a list of contact info for the State Party Committee members. Her first task is to put that together. Then she plans to make local party leaders aware that she’s on the job by reaching out to the county chairs immediately about the ballot initiatives that are already getting revved up.

Another way to get the attention of Democrats is to cover what’s going on this legislative session. The state faces a $700 million budget shortfall, so there will be plenty to report, as the legislature wrestles with where to make the cuts. Montee told the Progressive Dems that the party has a huge e-mail database, and that she plans to make the most of it to spread the word about doings in the lege in the upcoming months. Furthermore, she will send info to party officials in St. Louis and Jackson counties and ask them to forward it to the people on their e-mail lists.

Still another step in reviving the party is to urge county chairs to set up web pages and keep them current. Since she will be sending them articles about what’s going on in Jeff City, at least some of the content for those web pages will be ready made for them.

Montee believes … No, Montee knows that this state has plenty of Democrats. They’re out there, but they were fed up last election by the Walter Mittys in our ranks who were afraid to stand tall and speak out proudly about Democratic achievements and values. She’s not afraid to stand up to the Republican message machine, and she expects that the national party is waking up as well to that necessity. Indeed, the national party has set up a rapid response team to respond to an expected surge of lies and misunderstandings about the new health care law.

Could it be that we have a new party chairman who has some fire in her belly? Rea Kleeman hopes it is so and said that, for the kind of dedication Montee is showing, Montee should be paid. Right now, our new chairman is working part time for a law firm in St. Jo to pay the bills so that she can spend the rest of her work week (and, no doubt, burn lots of midnight oil) trying to give this party new life. Kleeman asked if Democratic Party chairmen in other states work for free.

Montee said that right now, given the recent, uh, less than stellar performance of the state party, she doesn’t feel as if she could ask its members to come up with a salary for her. She’s more intent on getting it reinvigorated. That said, though, she admitted that in other states it is a paid position. In fact, in some states, candidates for the office have spent up to $100,000 to campaign for the job. You can bet that when Ann Wagner chaired the Republican state party, she got paid.

I have no idea how much Susan Montee ought to be compensated for her organizational and political expertise. What I do know is that she’ll need wisdom and energy for the task she’s taking on. So I thank her for taking on the challenge–and hope that eventually she gets monetary thanks commensurate with her efforts.

And by the way, any progressives interested in joining Progressive Dems–STL may do so by contacting Rea Kleeman: (314) 727-7374, beckkleeman@charter.net

I don’t know about you, but I was raised to believe that the pen is mightier than the sword, and when I studied the French Revolution in History class, I admit freely that I was sickened by Jean-Paul Marat, and I felt a certain affinity for Charlotte Corday, the assassin who silenced with a dagger the violent rhetoric that spawned the Reign of Terror. And she did so because she was convinced — and rightly so — that the hateful, vile, poisonous rhetoric of Marat was destroying her country, was directly responsible for the September Massacres and was hurtling her country toward civil war. In short — Marat was the Sarah Palin of the French Revolution and his paper, The Friend of the People was her Faceook page.

In the short term, Marat became a martyr, but history has been far kinder to Corday and held the contemptible little man to proper account.

I do not want history to repeat itself and I certainly do not want Sarah Palin to be a martyr.

I want her to be forgotten.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that is going to happen.

Not with so many on the right doubling down and circling the wagons around their Mean Girl leader. Indeed, Bloody Bill Kristol is accusing me of “McCarthyism” for criticizing her for her role in lowering the discourse of this country.  

But damnit, she is culpable.

And Bill Kristol damn well knows it. And so does Sarah Palin. That is why her first instinct upon hearing that the shooting had happened, before the names of the victims were even known, she was scrubbing her website and her facebook page. But the violent imagery and rhetoric is so pervasive that short of taking the sites down completely, there is simply no way to eradicate it.

Fox News knows she bears some responsibility, too. That is why, as soon as her name was mentioned by an attendee of a candlelight vigil that the network was covering, they cut the feed, proving once and for all that they are not a news organization, but a propaganda organ for the hard-right radicals and would-be fascists in this country. They don’t want to risk reality and awareness encroaching on the minds of the least-informed, most-misinformed, news consumers on the planet.

And Ross Douthat does, too. That is why he contorted himself like a pretzel in his column today trying to put responsibility for political violence on the shoulders of the left — as if this country even had a “left.” Douthat harkens back to the 60s to make his case — Oswalt was a ‘Marxist of sorts’ and George Wallace was shot and paralyzed by someone who wasn’t all that interested in politics at all, he just wanted to shoot someone prominent and he couldn’t get close enough to Nixon. But he actually inadvertently bolsters the opposite case, and that is that words matter.

Not so much to you and me and other rational, thinking people. We can put the rhetoric in context. But we know that there are irrational and disturbed people out there, and political opponents seem to have forgotten that when prominent people — like the new Speaker of the House — say things like “he may be a dead man” about a member of the opposite party, like Boehner did about Rep. Driehaus after he voted for the healthttp://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/03/emanuel_cleaver_spit_on_–_now_with_video.phphcare bill, some of the less-stable will take your words to heart. A right wing blog posted directions to his house, and the death threats started. Here in Missouri, anti-healthcare reform zealots took a coffin to Representative Carnahan’s home and burned him in effigy. And don’t forget that my Congressman was spit on.

Given all that, this doubling-down on the part of the right wing is at the same time expected, yet unbelievable.

Only someone with a pathological level of cognitive dissonance could argue that the discourse on the right has no responsibility, even though we just had an election season that saw a Senate candidate in Nevada talking about “Second Amendment remedies”. Before that we had a Congresswomen from Minnesota look into television cameras and say, sincerely, that she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” in opposition to climate change legislation.

This all matters, and what happened Saturday was a symptom of the cancer that is destroying our society.

See, here is the thing everyone forgets about dog-whistles — it isn’t just your dog that hears it when you blow one. Other dogs in the vicinity hear it too, and if one of them is already quite mad, the results can be what we saw Saturday.

So unless — pardon the pun — that is what the media and the right wing noise machine are shooting for, then they need to shut the fuck up.

For GOP politicians striking the right note in the wake of the Tucson shootings is a delicate matter. Republicans are either quiet or defensive – as indeed behooves members of a party that has not exactly gone out on a limb to disavow “Second Amendment remedies.” Take a look at the twitter accounts of most Missouri GOPers from Sunday; if they mention Gabrielle Giffords at all, it is only to offer polite condolences for her unspecified misfortune. There’s certainly something to be said for decorum at a time like this, but, as Politico‘s David Catenese remarked about the silence emanating from GOP Senate challengers:

… in today’s world where it’s increasingly simple to communicate instantly, I found it curious that most candidates for the world’s greatest deliberative body haven’t yet found time or a way to offer their thoughts on what will be the dominant story of the weeks to come.

One exception was Todd Akin (R-2nd) who felt empowered to observe that Americans are free “to express their opinions, to argue and disagree. But this is in a totally different realm. It’s a whole different thing when you talk about murder.” No kidding! One wonders if Rep. Akin, who last year was willing to rile up the yahoos with jokes about lynching Democratic congresspeople, might have just discovered that it’s not a good thing for public figures to implicitly approve of or suggest violence?  

Some GOPers have already started playing defense, of course, and I expect that more of our Missourians will soon join the “who me” team as well. These guys know what they’ve been doing and they really don’t want to say sorry. We can already see their playbook taking form: Arizona’s Senator Jon Kyl remarked about the shooter, Jared Laughner, that “it’s probably giving him too much credit to ascribe a coherent political philosophy to him.” Laughner was just a whack job and you can’t blame Kyl or the GOP for all the whack jobs in the country, right?

When I hear such crass efforts to distance oneself and one’s political and ideological fellow-travelers from the violence in Tucson, Bill Clinton’s remarks at an event commemorating the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing come to my mind:

What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold – but that the words we use really do matter, because there’s this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike …

One of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have.

Only one Missouri politician has so far indicated that he understands the importance of personal responsibility as we go forward. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-5th) observed on “Meet the Press” that:

We are in a dark place in this country right now … . The hostility is here. People want to deny it, it is real. Members of Congress either need to turn down the volume, begin to try to exercise some high level of civility, or this darkness will never be overcome with light

I can already hear the more truculent citizens who have enjoyed the past two years of GOP-approved wilding whining about freedom of speech. Such misguided individuals I refer to Matthew Iglesias, who gets the correct response just right:

The idea that upholding important basic liberties requires us to refrain from moral criticism of misconduct is wildly misguided…. There’s something wrong, ethically speaking, with suggesting that your political opponents are orders of magnitude more monstrous than they really are. People who don’t want formal rules policing conduct have an especially strong interest in demonstrating that the absence of rules doesn’t mean a society in which there are no norms of conduct that encourage sociability, cooperation, etc.

In other words, we are personally responsible for our conduct, for what we say and how it influences others. Get it?

Violent rhetoric in our political discourse has become commonplace.

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik: Arizona ‘Mecca For Prejudice & Bigotry’

First Posted: 01- 8-11 11:18 PM   |   Updated: 01- 9-11 08:28 AM

….While speaking, the sheriff said that himself it included, “it’s not unusual for all public officials to get threats.” However, he said the sentiment doesn’t come without consequences.

“And that’s the sad thing of what’s going on in America,” he explained. “Pretty soon, we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.”

A representative of the Faux News Channel took issue with Sheriff Dupnik’s words on the subject.

In Holden, Missouri, on August 3, 2010 – from a Holden Police Offense/Incident Report:

Holden Police Department

110 W. Third St. Holden, MO 64040

Offense/Incident Report

….On 08/03/10 at approximately 10:15 hours, reporting officer Cpl. Michael Scott Brandt, #308, was on duty in the City of Holden. I was contacted at the Holden Police Department by Courtney Cole in regards to an incident that occurred outside the Polling center in Holden.

According to Ms. Cole, she was standing outside the polling center speaking to a voter when an argument between herself and a male subject, she identifies as Jim Nipko, began. During their argument Mr. Nipko stated, “I’m not voting for you just based on that. I hate what they are doing. I am going to go get my nine millimeter.” According to Ms. Cole, during their argument Ms. Nipko was yelling at Mr. Nipko to get in the car.

I went to Mr. Nipko’s residence to speak with him about the incident. Mr. Nipko stated that he did have an argument with a candidate running for office. According to him they argued and increase until she asked if he was going to hit her. His reply was, “No but can you out run a nine millimeter.” I told Mr. Nipko that he could not say things like that especially around a polling center. I advised Mr. Nipko that I would need to speak with Major Martin and the Prosecuting Attorney, and that I would get back to him.

M.S. Brandt, Cpl.

….Printed 08/16/2010 05:51:35 PM

We received a copy of a letter to the editor (Update: at PoliticMo) written by Courtney Cole, the unsuccessful Democratic Party candidate in the 121st Legislative District race in November, in response to the incident in Arizona:

All over America, people have spent the weekend in shock over the senseless murder of six people and the wounding of another 13 in Arizona. It was heart breaking to read quotes from the father of nine-year-old, Christina Taylor Green, who was killed in the attack, “She was excited about the political process.”

Unfortunately, the political process is ill.

In the last election cycle, when I ran for State Representative, I received several threats of gun violence on the campaign trail. The most serious involved Holden City Councilman Jim Nipko. On the day of the primary, I went to the polling location in Holden where I stood and greeted individuals as they left the poll after voting. Nipko heard me speaking with another individual about labor issues as he left the poll with his wife. He became very hostile with me and claimed that he would do whatever possible to see that I wasn’t elected after hearing my support for workers.

Quoting directly from the police report on Nipko’s side of the story: “According to him they argued and increased until she asked if he was going to hit her. His reply was, ‘No but can you outrun a nine millimeter?'”

To me, this was a threat and I was concerned enough to go to the police. The county prosecutor, Lynn Stoppy, refused to pursue the case, dismissing it as only an implied threat.

I didn’t draw attention to these incidents during the race. My point in sharing this story now is not to rehash the past campaign. I want to offer a very specific local example of violence in politics. We would like to think that the vitriol is only a part of the national political scene, however, it made its way to Johnson County.

I believe we have a responsibility to ourselves, Democrats to Republicans, conservatives to liberals, to respect our democracy and political process as well as each other. Our political environment has become more and more hostile. The unseen victims of the current chaos are all of us. Constructive debate is overshadowed by cheap slams and dishonest robo calls. Not only does it cost us respect for our neighbors, it crowds out the reason needed to solve our collective problems and make coherent decisions about the future.

We can commit to civility. We can be an example of faith in the democracy that has guided us to being the greatest nation on earth. Just as the mother of the young girl who lost her life this past weekend pleads, “I want her memory to live on that she’s a face of hope…a face of us coming together as a country to stop the violence and hatred and evil words.”

Courtney Cole, Warrensburg

Evidently, in our current political environment “can you out run a nine millimeter[?]” now passes for acceptable discourse.

“…Pretty soon, we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office…”

From Steve Benen:

…in the 21st century, a Republican senator who wants to convey a basic observation about rhetorical excesses, has to do so anonymously. We’ve reached the point at which a GOP senator wants to say that “tone matters,” but can’t quite bring himself/herself to say so on the record…

That speaks as loudly as scrubbing your web site and someone else mumbling about “surveyor’s symbols”. Also, too.

Seriously.

The money to support the campaign for the continuation of the earnings tax in Kansas City which will be on the April ballot keeps coming in.

The past few days at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

A101430 01/08/2011 SAVE KANSAS CITY COMMITTEE Commerece Bank Commerece Bank Shares, INC. 1000 Walnut Street Kansas City MO 64106 1/8/2011 $15,000.00

A101430 01/08/2011 SAVE KANSAS CITY COMMITTEE Husch Blackwell Operating Account 4801 Main Street Suite 1000 Kansas City MO 64112 1/8/2011 $10,000.00

A101430 01/08/2011 SAVE KANSAS CITY COMMITTEE Husch Blackwell Operating Account 4801 Main Street Suite 1000 Kansas City MO 64112 1/8/2011 $10,000.00

A101430 01/08/2011 SAVE KANSAS CITY COMMITTEE Black & Veatch 11401 Lamar Overland Park KS 66211 1/8/2011 $25,000.00

[emphasis added]

Uh, that double contribution from Husch Blackwell may be a typo. We’ll be able to check it in the quarterly report.

A101430 01/06/2011 SAVE KANSAS CITY COMMITTEE Stinson Morrison Hecker L.L.P P.O. Box 419251 Kansas City MO 64141 1/6/2011 $7,500.00

[emphasis added]

Previously:

Kansas City antes up to support the earnings tax vote in 2011, part 2 (January 4, 2011)

Kansas City antes up to support the earnings tax vote in 2011 (January 3, 2011)

Finally, part 2 (December 20, 2010)

Finally (December 14, 2010)

HB 26: an attempt to fix some of the mess of Proposition A (December 3, 2010)

Where’s Kansas City on fundraising for the 2011 earnings tax vote? (November 27, 2010)

St. Louis leads the fundraising way on the April 2011 earnings tax vote (November 16, 2010)

Any bets that the Royals follow through for Kansas City? (November 13, 2010)

The last Twitter post yesterday morning from Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D):

Rep_Giffords  Gabrielle Giffords

My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now. Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind or tweet me later. 21 hours ago

Early last August:

Arizona: the good, the bad, and the ugly

…There’s still a lot of good in Arizona. Like Raul Grijalva (D) and Gabrielle Giffords (D). And it’s a toss-up whether Missouri or Arizona has the most egregious eye roll inducing right wingnuts. If pressed I’d have to give a slight edge to Arizona…

President Obama at the White House yesterday afternoon:

Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D): …things, for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list. But, the thing is, the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that action…

FLASHBACK: Gabby Giffords Faced Threats Over Heath Care Vote

….Giffords’s father Spencer Gifford, 75, told the New York Post that her enemies were “the whole Tea Party….”

….Giffords was also one of the members of Congress “targeted” by Sarah Palin for their vote on health care. An image posted on Palin’s Facebook page featured crosshairs over the geographical districts of 20 members of Congress.

On Twitter, Palin linked to the page with this message: “Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” Pls see my Facebook page.”

Since the incident today, Palin’s staff removed Gifford’s name from the list on her “Take Back The 20” site, which has since gone down….

[emphasis added]

ddayen  David Dayen

I’ll say this, if your first instinct after hearing about a tragedy is to scrub your websites, you have a problem as a political movement 13 hours ago

And at what cost?

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) was shot point blank during a constituent meeting at a Safeway grocery store in Tucson, Arizona today. 40 year-old Giffords is Arizona’s first Jewish Congresswomen, and reports have been unclear as to whether she has expired, or is still undergoing surgery. This is a national tragedy and unprecedented as there has only been one member of Congress killed in the line of duty, Rep. Leo Ryan during the Jonestown mass-suicide and massacre in 1978.

As the details emerge from what was clearly a horrific scene in Tucson with many wounded, some interesting aspects regarding her most recent political opponent have surfaced.

Jane Hamsher, of FireDogLake blog wrote:

Giffords’ 2010 Congressional opponent Jesse Kelly held a June 12 gun event that was billed as follows on the Pima County Republican website:

“Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office, Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly”

Like some other staunch tea party activists (Sarah Palin put a bulls-eye “logo” right on Giffords during the 2010 campaign), candidate Kelly utilized colorful political metaphors, like, “Get on Target…remove Gabrielle Giffords…shoot a fully automatic M16” — many cognitive linguists will tell you that connecting these words with the emotional intent to defeat, ruin, or destroy a political opponent can result in effectively communicating a violent call to arms.

As Drew Westen explains in his seminal work, “The Political Brain”,

“…when data clashed with desire, the political brain would somehow “reason” its way to the desired conclusions…Our hunch was that what passes for reasoning in politics is more often rationalization, motivated by efforts to reason to emotionally satisfying conclusions.”

In other words, people will morph, mangle, and manipulate sound data or facts right in front of their eyes, in order to reach the emotional high of “being right”.

With a fervor whipped up in a particular borderline individual, they might just as well transform candidate Jesse Kelly’s “M16 target shooting” message into something far more macabre.

This is why it is absolutely essential for candidates, elected officials, corporate officers — anyone in positions of leadership — to be absolutely resolute in communicating responsibly, and not playing upon the potentially fragile emotions of certain people in their audience.

My prayers are with Gabrielle, her NASA astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, and the rest of her family and friends.

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) at a town hall in Concordia, Missouri on August 10, 2010:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): town hall in Concordia, Missouri – media availability

….Question: You like the individual mandate?

Senator McCaskill: Uh, I mean, the mandate obviously is the most unpopular part, but, um, when you ask people if they want to do away with preexisting conditions they say, well of course, that’s so unfair. Well, who’s gonna buy insurance before they’re sick. You can’t do away with preexisting conditions unless you set up an environment where everyone has insurance. The nice thing about this is it’s not gonna be government run, it’s not gonna be government policies. People are gonna be able to shop, make choices. And if they can’t afford it we’re gonna help ’em by making it more affordable with some help from the government. So I think it’s, is it a perfect solution? No. But it’s the best solution I think that anybody’s come up with to an untenable spiral of healthcare costs in this country….

In today’s Kansas City Star:

McCaskill looks for alternatives to health care mandate

By STEVE KRASKE

The Kansas City Star

Sen. Claire McCaskill’s once rock-solid support for a key component of President Barack Obama’s national health care reform law appears to be wavering.

While saying she still backs the individual mandate portion of the law – the controversial section requiring that virtually every individual carry health insurance or pay a penalty – the Missouri Democrat said Thursday that she is searching for alternatives.

“I think there are different things we could look at to see if they would work, and I’m open to that,” she said….

The Star story quotes a Sarah Steelman (r) Twitter post. Sure enough:

Senator McCaskill voted for Obamacare now looking at alternatives to health care mandate.Try following the Constitution and honoring freedom 1:18 PM Jan 5th  via web

Methinks republicans protest too much. Here’s the punchline:

Summary Of A 1993 Republican Health Reform Plan

Feb 23, 2010

In November, 1993, Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., introduced what was considered to be one of the main Republican health overhaul proposals: “A bill to provide comprehensive reform of the health care system of the United States.”

Titled the “Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993,” it had 21 co-sponsors, including two Democrats (Sens. Boren and Kerrey). The bill, which was not debated or voted upon, was an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s plan.  It bears similarity to the Democratic bill passed by the Senate Dec. 24, 2009, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act…

….Subtitle F: Universal Coverage – Requires each citizen or lawful permanent resident to be covered under a qualified health plan or equivalent health care program by January 1, 2005. Provides an exception for any individual who is opposed for religious reasons to health plan coverage, including those who rely on healing using spiritual means through prayer alone….

[emphasis added]

Uh, that’s an individual mandate. The sponsors:

…COSPONSORS(20), ALPHABETICAL…:

Sen Bennett, Robert F. [UT] – 11/22/1993

Sen Bond, Christopher S. [MO] – 11/22/1993

Sen Boren, David L. [OK] – 5/17/1994

Sen Cohen, William S. [ME] – 11/22/1993

Sen Danforth, John C. [MO] – 11/22/1993

Sen Dole, Robert J. [KS] – 11/22/1993

Sen Domenici, Pete V. [NM] – 11/22/1993

Sen Durenberger, Dave [MN] – 11/22/1993

Sen Faircloth, Lauch [NC] – 11/22/1993

Sen Gorton, Slade [WA] – 11/22/1993

Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA] – 11/22/1993

Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] – 11/22/1993

Sen Hatfield, Mark O. [OR] – 11/22/1993

Sen Kassebaum, Nancy Landon [KS] – 11/22/1993

Sen Kerrey, J. Robert [NE] – 5/17/1994

Sen Lugar, Richard G. [IN] – 11/22/1993

Sen Simpson, Alan K. [WY] – 11/22/1993

Sen Specter, Arlen [PA] – 11/22/1993

Sen Stevens, Ted [AK] – 11/22/1993

Sen Warner, John [VA] – 11/22/1993…

[emphasis added]

How ironic, eh? Of course, the stenographer neglects to mention any republican hypocrisy.

MBersin  Michael Bersin

@sarah_steelman Uh, in 1993 Bond, Dole, Grassley, Hatch, etc. sponsored HCR bill with individual mandate. Were they dishonoring freedom?23 seconds ago