I am sure that I am not the only person who is puzzled by Tea Partier Liz Lauber’s primary challenge against Todd Akin, who is, after all, ranked by the National Journal as the 11th most conservative member of the House of Representatives. Makes you wonder what Lauber is really all about.

Well wonder no more. According to an article in the rightwing rag, The Washington Times, Lauber decided to run for Congress after her representative voted for the TARP bailout.  Of course, she is either confused or her representative at the time was someone other than Akin, since he was one of the Republicans to vote against the bailout. Hasn’t stopped her from giving him a primary challenge though.

Lauber is, it seems, anxious that nobody regard her candidacy as simply an exercise in anti-government bile. She is at pains to show that she wants “not just to stand against government, but to stand for something.”  To that end she and fellow Tea Partier, Phil Troyer, who is running for office in Indiana, have decided to copy Newt Gringrich and present voters with a Tea Party flavored Compact with America, the principles of which are about what one would expect:

-Passing real tax reform, such as a flat tax or fair tax.

-Requiring a vote of Congress to approve each federal agency regulation.

.-Banning earmark recipients from making campaign donations

-Prohibiting federal ownership interests in private companies.

-Requiring bills to be posted online five days in advance of a vote.

-Performing a federalism and constitutionality analysis of all bills.

-Voting for appropriations bills that reduce spending by at least 5 percent.

-Prohibiting federal funding of abortion.

-Offering a constitutional amendment for term limits.

All Mostly questionable provisions that should be very popular with Tea Party zealots – and nothing that Todd Akin would have a problem signing onto, with the exception of the term limits requirement. So the question remains, why would fringers in the 2nd district vote for Liz Lauber? Anti-government bile?

Update – having 2nd thoughts: As I look at the “compact” again, it strikes me that the third provision above – banning earmark recipients from making campaign donations – might be the source of difference between Lauber and Akin. Could it be that a group, initiated by astroturfers to fight health care reform and rational energy policy, has actually taken on its own life – apart from serving as an outlet for every variety of right-wing battiness, that is?  In spite of their silly rhetoric and “constitutional” craziness, do they actually get it when it comes to corruption?  If so, it could be really bad news for the Republicans who hope to march to victory in the Tea Party parade.

Okay, it’s late and I am admittedly fit for nothing serious, but when I came across this TPM review of the new Michele Bachmann comic, a crudely drawn electric bulb lit up in the psychic balloon that is always floating above my head just in case I get an idea. The latest issue of the Bachmann comic series is filled with actual statements about gays made by Bachmann, the current Queen of Crazy Republicanland – and, while tragic, they’re also a scream. Earlier issues emphasize her other pseudo-political preoccupations to equal effect.

Starting from the premise that ridicule is the best way to neutralize folks who are both obscene and absurd, wouldn’t it be just loverly if somebody put out a series of comic books about some of our Missouri crazies? Wouldn’t you buy titles like, say,  Calamity Jane Cunningham Hunts the Disappearing Constitution, Cynthia Davis at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, Todd Akin’s Fantastic American History,The Godfather Blunt, or Strange Climate Science with Blaine Luetkemeyer? There are almost unlimited possibilities.  

Alternatively, following the example of baseball cards, one could just print the most outrageous statements made by our fringewing celebs on collectible cards – or maybe put together a flash card game where one would have to guess who said what. So much of what these folks say manages to be so appalling and yet so amusingly fantastical at the same time that I can’t understand why some enterprising soul hasn’t already done something along these lines – perhaps, as a handy campaign aid?

When I read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s account of the Tea Party rally in Kiener Plaza last Saturday, I was struck by the claims of one Mike Carey, President of Ohio Coal Association and the Chief Executive of of the American Council for Affordable and Reliable Energy (ACARE), newly formed to fight clean energy legislation:

Mike Carey … blasted the proposed climate change legislation, saying it would allow Congress to dictate what Americans ate, where they lived and what kinds of vehicles they drove.

Given the now familiar strategy of both the health and dirty energy industries, which is to rev up the seemingly inbred paranoia of the Tea Partiers, Carey’s evocation of overweening government control was to be expected – just more of the general Tea Party hokum.

However, in the same edition of the Post-Dispatch, I came across an article that described the events that followed Tuesday, Nov. 28, 1939, “Black Tuesday,” when the city of St. Louis  was darkened by a fog of coal smoke so dense that “Motorists drove slowly with headlights on. Streetlights, still on, made ghostly glows.”

The cheap, high-sulfur coal responsible for the miasma of pollution that had made St. Louis one of the “filthiest” cities in the nation was mined nearby in Illinois, and there were numerous local interests that had a stake in maintaining the status quo. Efforts to do something about the problem were effectively thwarted until Black Tuesday made it clear that there had to be a change. Sound familiar?

Thanks to the shock delivered by Black Tuesday, St. Louis was finally able to take the necessary steps to insure an acceptable quality of life for its citizens. I doubt that many people in the city at that time felt that government was curtailing their liberty when it stepped in and refused to give local mining interests their druthers.  

Yet last Saturday, 1500-2000 people, some of whom are probably descended from those who experienced Black Tuesday, were thumping their chests and gibbering about how “big government” wants to take away their “liberty” – all because a majority of the citizens of this democracy elected a government based on its plan of action to safeguard our quality of life and health.