Mixed messages in Lone Jack, Missouri.

An Obama/Biden yard sign in Lone Jack, Missouri – under the Stars and Stripes and the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virgina

(and that label can depend on who you talk to about square versus rectangle).

No, this is not a photo manipulation in any fashion, nor is it staged, nor, to our knowledge, was the yard sign planted without the owner’s permission (a source told us that the yard sign has been there for a while).

Lone Jack, Missouri is a small town in eastern Jackson County. It was the site of a Civil War battle. There is a small local museum commemorating that battle.

Missouri is always a very interesting place.  

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C121046 08/28/2012 MISSOURIANS FOR ED MARTIN Missourians for Matt Blunt Inc. PO Box 144 PO Box 144 Jefferson City MO 65102 8/28/2012 $5,100.00

[emphasis added]

Heh. They can certainly find the checkbook. E-mail might be a something of a challenge.

And by giving him his due, I don’t mean snickering, giggling, or snorting. The guy’s got chutzpah. And, as far as principle goes, I’m not sure he doesn’t come off better than the party he represents. Consider the comments of Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee Chairman, who believes that Akin has an obligation to be pragmatic and put the party before his own ambitions (video at TPM):

… What I do love about some people in politics is they’re in it for the cause. They really do believe this is about liberty and freedom and the future of our country. If that’s really where you’re at and you have an opportunity to put someone else in pace who has a better chance at winning than you do,well then, you know, you’re not always the person who has to be the guy and I just think that the people who want to do something special are always better than the people who want to be somebody special …

Then, when asked if the Republican Party would consider acting in an equally pragmatic way, putting the good of the party before spite directed at Akin,  Priebus reacts vehemently, exclaiming that, “No, no. No. He could be tied. We’re not going to send him a penny.”  

Who would be hurting the Party most in this scenario? Evidently, when it comes to forgiving Akin, whose main sin, apart from bad biology, was to publicly enunciate the set of beliefs that are written into the GOP party platform – and that, incidentally, matches the policy prescriptions of the Vice-Presidential candidate, Paul Ryan – the Party is willing to cut off its nose to spite its face.

And, after hearing Mr. Priebus going on about the GOP liberty and freedom brigade, I can’t forbear adding that, in the unlikely scenario where one had to choose the GOPer who really believes the nonsense the new, extreme right-wing Republican Party dishes up, I’d take Todd Akin, repulsive as he is, over corporate toady Roy Blunt and pork king Kit Bond just about any day.  

In Warrensburg, on Friday, August 24, 2012:

Video by Jerry Schmidt

Previously:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): “Vets For Claire” listening tour in Parkville (August 24, 2012)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): “Vets For Claire” listening tour in Columbia (August 25, 2012)

Claire McCaskill – Todd Akins stays in race! Video by Jerry Schmidt (August 26, 2012)

…and Ron Paul (r) is, well, Ron Paul.

A presidential campaign yard sign in west central Missouri.

Now, if they could just figure out how to organize the rest of us would be in serious trouble.

By @BGinKC

I am becoming convinced that the Goddesses of yore are messing with me.

I said when Todd Akin stayed in that I feared I hadn’t lived a good enough life for that to happen, but he did. I’m still pinching myself over that to see if I’m awake, so I didn’t even dare dream that the Missouri GOP would respond by mounting a write-in campaign or running a republican as an Independent. Yet yesterday on This Week, there was Mary Matalin saying just that.

GOP operative Mary Matalin on Sunday said that the Republican Party would mount a third-party or write-in campaign to defeat Rep. Todd Akin (R), whose bid to defeat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is in danger after he suggested women could not get pregnant by “legitimate rape.”

Matalin told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that Republicans would find a way to run Missouri congressional candidate Ann Wagner against Akin after he slipped nearly 15 points in recent polls, now trailing McCaskill 49-44.

“George, he may have dug in, but he’s not going to have a shovel to continuing digging,” Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top adviser explained. “Because he’s not going to have any money. George Will is right. We need to win Missouri. We’re going to win Missouri. Ann Wagner is going to end up being our candidate. The party is going to get Ann Wagner in.”

“So you’re just convinced that he’s going to get out?” Stephanopolous asked.

“Or we’ll run a third party, we’ll run a write-in,” Matalin insisted. “We can do it. We have the money to do it. We are going to transfer the money.”

For the love of all that is sacred and holy, I plead with the fates and all the gods and goddesses in the pantheon, please, I beg of you, let her be serious. Please let the natioal know-it-alls be that pig-ignorant about Missouri and our particular brand of Chock-ful-o-Nuts religious zealots — and the “z word” is one I use judiciously.

Here’s the bottom line…Akin is in. He’s on a Mission From God. He stays in and the money doesn’t matter. All he needs is gas money to get from church to church and he can raise it from the folks in attendance if he has to. The 14% of the Missouri population that is die-hard anti-choice forced-birth nutjobs are going to vote for him. Even if he were to drop out and a court order was issued to remove his name from the ballot, I would wager that he would get between ten and fifteen percent of the vote. He has the zealot vote locked down, come hell or high water.

If the GOP puts Ann Wagner up as a write-in candidate, I would imagine that she would pull about 20-25% of the vote. There are still some sane republicans left in the state. Not many, but a few. Enough to split the vote on the right between the social-issues-driven Missouri chapter of the American Taliban religious freaks and the sane, moderate, business-driven republicans, therby allowing Claire McCaskill to cruise to reelection with a strong plurality of the vote.

I can not believe that this is happening. I knew that the MOGOP was going to reach critical mass and a reckoning between the religious and moderate wings of the party would become inevitable. But I didn’t think it was going to happen this soon and under these circumstances. It’s another one of those things I dared not dream possible.  

Astroturf refers to apparently grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions that are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms.

Yesterday Representative Vicky Hatzler (r) sent out her latest e-mail missive with some interesting observations an Medicare:

From: Representative Vicky Hartzler [….]

Date: Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at [….]

Subject: View From the Capitol – Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler’s Newsletter for the Week of August 20-24, 2012

To: [….]

….The deficit for 2012 alone….

….On another matter, I felt honored this week to be recognized for my efforts to address issues involving senior citizens. I was presented with the “Standing Up for America’s Seniors” award by RetireSafe – a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan grassroots organization that advocates on behalf of America’s seniors on such issues as Social Security, Medicare, health and financial well-being….

[emphasis added]

There is a history of receiving astroturf awards.

Let’s take a look at RetireSafe [2004]:

….RetireSafe is a project of the Council for Government Reform, a corporate-backed group that advocates privatization of Social Security and other government services….

[emphasis added]

Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t privatizing Social Security the third rail of American politics? Like that worked out so well for George W. Bush.

Via OpenSecrets [2012]:

Client Total Subsidiary (Lobbied For) Industry

Council for Government Reform $144,341 RetireSafe Repub/Conservative

[emphasis added]

So much for “nonpartisan”. Their financial numbers are down quite a bit from peaks in 2000, 2005 and 2010. 2011 was a particularly minimalist year.

Interesting, let’s look at what RetireSafe was up to when Medicare, part D was in the works.:

The Hill

September 22, 2004 Wednesday

Want to earn quick $4K? See GOP firm

By Bob Cusack

….A recent e-mail sent from the DCI Group’s Starlee Rhoades to healthcare consultants says that the campaign will run from Sept. 15 to Oct. 31 and that the client is RetireSafe, which has sponsored the hiring of healthcare consultants….

….Reached yesterday, Rhoades initially denied that she was involved in this campaign. But when told that her e-mail had been distributed widely, Rhoades said, “I can’t talk about it.”

In a faxed comment, RetireSafe acknowledged it has launched a nationwide education effort on the new Medicare drug law….

Yes, that Medicare, part D. You know:

A Windfall From Shifts to Medicare

By MILT FREUDENHEIM

Published: July 18, 2006

….in creating the federal Part D program, Congress – in what critics saw as a sop to the drug industry – barred the government from having a negotiating role….

Saving money with the ability to negotiate volume discounts? Not a priority.

Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits

Economic Recovery Measures, Financial Rescues Have Only Temporary Impact

By Kathy Ruffing and James R. Horney

May 10, 2011

….One of the major domestic initiatives of the Bush Administration was enactment of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (known informally as the Medicare Modernization Act, or MMA). The MMA created a new prescription-drug benefit in Medicare, known as Medicare Part D. This legislation was only partly paid for, and it added significantly to the deficit that President Obama inherited….

….CBO now expects the net cost of Medicare Part D over that initial 2004-2013 period to be about $375 billion (as compared to the original $552 billion figure). But, it is not possible to tell whether the savings in Medicaid and other programs have deviated from CBO’s original estimate of $157 billion….

I don’t think Representative Hartzler (r) quite gets the irony of happily trumpeting an award she received from an astroturf group which at one time advocated for legislation which increased the national debt, while at the same time she decries that same national debt.  

Previously:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): “Vets For Claire” listening tour in Parkville (August 24, 2012)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): “Vets For Claire” listening tour in Columbia (August 25, 2012)

Todd Akin spoke truer than we knew at the time when, in response to questions about reputed intra-party negotiations to replace him with another GOP contender, he declared:

There may be some negotiations,” he added, “but they don’t include me.

The evidence, via Think Progress:

This morning on ABC News, however, Mary Matalin – a well-connected GOP operative – suggested that Republicans would run a write-in candidate to defeat Akin. Matlin said that, if necessary, Republicans would “transfer the money” to Ann Wagner – a former chairwoman of the Missouri GOP who is currently running for Congress – to run as a 3rd party or write-in candidate.

I would be tempted to say that this means that the GOP cares more about winning than about playing by the rules of a democracy – Akin won his primary fair and square after all – but it’s not clear that a GOP-sponsored challenger will do anything for anyone but Claire McCaskill.  Apart from the satisfaction some state GOP bigwigs may get from, metaphorically speaking, spitting in Akin’s face, splitting the GOP vote between the evangelicals and the big-business faction doesn’t seem like a really good idea. As far as the moral high road goes, Akin was right, for all the good it’ll probably do him, when he said that “This is an election, not a selection.”

There is, of course, a certain irony that comes into play when we hear Todd Akin defending the democratic process. He hasn’t always been so keen on majority rule according to some recent statements (h/t MinistryofTruth at DailyKos):

The money quote:

The Founders were really down on the idea of Democracy, they despised it, because they understood the danger of a rabble getting all excited about something and not knowing all the facts and going off half-cocked and doing the wrong thing.

Personally, I’m not sure that the fact that we have a representative rather than a direct democracy means that the founders despised democracy; nor do the checks and balances that are intended to prevent the dictatorship of the majority constitute a repudiation of democracy, but rather function as a mechanism that keeps our diverse democracy safe from religious theocrats like Rep. Akin. Nevertheless, if one is to take Matalin seriously, it does seem as if the members of the Missouri GOP political establishment might really believe that the hoi polloi in their rank-and-file need the benefit of the party’s supervision and superior wisdom.

Afterthought:  Of course, if the GOP ran the party’s go-to girl, Ann Wagner, against McCAskill, that would leave the GOP slot in the 2nd to some small potatoes also-ran. So if the GOP vote is split in the Senate race and the Democratic challenger in the 2nd, whom I believe is Glenn Koenen, actually got some party support, we might manage to get rid of not only Todd Akin, but Wagner as well? Too much to hope for?  

Then again, this strategically leaked rumor may only be one more part of the psy-ops strategy that the GOP is running against Akin. It may just be too dumb to be anything else.