Recently Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker claimed the overweening Republican problem to be messaging. According to Parker, the GOP needs to present a more positive, hopeful face to the country. She thinks their negativity permits Democrats to cast them – unfairly – as cruel and heartless villains who consequently can’t compete with a president who wins hearts and minds by tossing – ready for the conservative meme du jour, a riff on the old bread and circuses schtick – “coins and candy into the crowds.”

Unfortunately for Parker’s thesis, which largely centers on Obamacare, access to basic healthcare is a little more substantive than “coins and candy.” In fact it isn’t overstating the case to say it’s a matter of life and death. Healthcare reform is long overdue and although Obamacare, as a product of compromise reflecting diverse interests, is far from perfect, its problems are all eminently fixable. It’s a real and considerable achievement that will make all our lives a little better.

It is not the ineffective and naively liberal president they consistently  invoke that bothers Republicans, but the calm, measured, do-something-for-the-99% president who is driving them bonkers. And the resulting GOP tantrum simply reveals what they really stand for – and the picture is, as Parker correctly discerns, not very pretty, but, Parker to the contrary, the problem is more essential than bad self-presentation. Based on their actual policy preferences and lack of concern for the real problems of the vast majority of Americans, nobody can deny Republicans are a seriously bloody-minded bunch.

Slate has published this interactive map prepared by Kantar media that tracks where money is being spent on Obamacare attack ads relative to the numbers of uninsured. Guess what? More uninsured, more ads. Here in Missouri, the let’s-kill-Obamacare folks are hammering the Springfield Market where 23.5% of the inhabitants are uninsured. It’s also one of the poorest areas in Missouri.

Then, of course, there’s the content of these ads. For the most part, they seem filled with distortions and outright falsehoods. What kind of people tell lies to  make their points? Especially when those very people here in Missouri are refusing to take federal funds, our own tax dollars, to expand Medicaid coverage, all the while while bleating about the imagined evils of depending on a federal hand-out – but never one word about the evil situation where over 20% of their constituents lack access to good healthcare.

Perhaps Parker’s candy meme tells us more than she intended about who today’s Republicans really are. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s hilarious variation on the old bread and circuses business suggests that the GOP ought to be careful about which talking points they want to promulgate:

They [i.e. Democrats] are giving away candy, and it is tasty stuff,” he said. “We’ve got the drill and the Novocain to fix the cavity.

So a functioning safety net, good health care, quality education, strong infrastructure and a prosperous and growing middle class – all the concerns that animate progressives – are just like cavities? And the folks running around waving their metaphorical drills? Parker is at least partly right. Nobody wants sadists running government.    

Refresh your memory and review the trio of ads dealing with emergency contraception for rape victims that Claire McCaskill just debuted. Then take a look at how the ads were reported by KMOV TV (Channel 4) in St. Louis (h/t Think Progress – transcript available there):

Probably just sloppiness, but this is the same station that took the opportunity when given a chance to interview President Obama to rudely quiz him about his supposed “excessive” vacations, a rightwing meme that had been well debunked long before the interview; dissed Occupy St. Louis; and went all-in to promote the Tea Party. Tell you something about the information fed to locals, perhaps?  

Dave Spence spent what probably amounts to a pretty big pot of money to run an ad that is likely to be more notable for the fact that it misspells “governor” as “Spenceforgoverner.com” than for its content. Rep. Todd Akin has also run into problems with spelling and grammar when assembling his campaign adds Website. They’re minor errors, and, God knows, with my propensity for typos, I should tread carefully. But wouldn’t you think that folks who are paying beaucoup bucks to run ads could take the time to proof them? Especially since there are relatively few words to check and most of them are common everyday words.

When I was in college, I remember a professor who declared that casual, sloppy errors in term papers amounted to an expression of contempt for the educational process and for educators. By the same measure, aren’t such casual, easily corrected slips on the part of politicians likely to be an expression of contempt for voters? It’s sort of like they think we’re so easy we don’t require much effort. And isn’t it just as likely that this contempt will express itself in other ways as well? Through blatant, in-your-face dishonesty, perhaps, or excuses that beggar belief? And sure enough, both Akin and Spence are guilty.

Remember Spence’s effort to present his home economics degree as a business degree in economics? Or consider his crude deflection of accusations that he voted to default on a TARP bailout loan while on the board of Reliance Bank. He can’t refute that fact, so he pretends that the issue is whether or not he was on the Board when it decided to request the funds. Do you maybe think Spence thinks we’re stupid?

Akin, for his part, quickly flip-flopped on earmarks when it meant a few bucks in his campaign coffers, but tried to save face by claiming that his new-found enthusiasm for earmark bans was consistent with what he’d really meant all along when he said that banning earmarks was unconstitutional. Once again, don’t you get the idea that this guy thinks we’re stupid?  

If Spence and Akin demonstrate a lazy contempt for voters, the Romney/Ryan campaign has taken the same approach to new heights (or, perhaps, depths?). Take, for example, Romney’s tax and deficit proposals. When challenged with the fact that there’s no math there, he refuses to actually discuss the issue in terms of specifics; he just insists that the criticisms aren’t true and, if we’ll just trust him, it’ll all turn out okay. However, in the words of the non-partisan study that actually did the math:

Our conclusion was not a prediction about [what] Governor Romney would do as President, it was an arithmetic calculation: all of the promises couldn’t be met simultaneously without resorting to tax increases on households with income below $200,000.

Now, are you telling me that Governor Romney, a former financier, doesn’t know that? Want another example? Consider Romney’s statement in last Wednesday’s debate that the health care “plan” that he put on his Website provides for coverage of preexisting conditions. It’s just flat-out not true, and it’s highly unlikely that the Governor didn’t know that. He’s responsible for what it says after all. Do you think that maybe he figures we’re just too lazy or stupid to check it out?

Of course, in the aftermath of an obstreperous  presidential debate performance, Romney is enjoying a bump in the polls. While Akin is running behind McCaskill in the polls, at least 40% of Missourians don’t care how he disses them – in fact, he’s just announced that he pulled in a $1 million dollars in online campaign donations. True, Spence has an uphill battle, but he’s still collecting endorsements from organizations that ought to know better. Maybe the GOP is on to something with that stupid shtick. If any of these bozos make it into elected office this November, it won’t be because the electorate is all that.

Todd Akin is out with a fanciful new ad. In it he claims that, “federal stimulus spending ‘made McCaskill rich.'” (Not to distract from the main point, but wasn’t she rich before the stimulus?) Apropos the ad, Akin asserts:

…  Claire McCaskill is on record for going through the stimulus line by line, and stated that the stimulus was solely for creating jobs and stimulating the economy, […]. Now we know that McCaskill’s family business received $1 million of taxpayer money from the stimulus bill that she voted for. I voted against this bill because I did not believe it would help the economy and because pork-barrel spending can neither stimulate the economy nor create jobs.

As reported in Politico, McCaskill’s campaign strongly denied the implications of financial impropriety:

McCaskill’s campaign reached out to take strong exception to the charges leveled in the Akin ad, and provided documentation that some of the claims in the commercial are misleading or wrong. The critical data point is that Akin’s ad says McCaskill’s husband, Joseph Shepard, pulled in $1 million from investments in government-subsidized housing projects — but his share of investment in those projects was actually less than 5 percent, leaving him with far less than $1 million in income. What’s more, McCaskill’s campaign says that the payments Shepard received from the government were for contracts that predated the stimulus, and that the government would have been legally required to pay out regardless of whether the stimulus was passed

So much for Akin’s quest to expose a stimulus related scandal. I suspect that if he continues to pursue this line, he may end up feeling a little nostaligic for the “wildcat” McCaskill he credited himself with uncaging. How can it possibly help Akin to make such flimsily-supported allegations of financial irregularities given the recently-revived accusations that he used earmarks for personal gain. The accusations were based on a report published in the the Washington Post:

Across the nation, 33 members of Congress have helped direct more than $300 million in earmarks to dozens of public projects for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members.

Between 2005 and 2009, Akin helped secure $3.3 million to upgrade part of Route 141 in his district west of St. Louis. Less than a half-mile east of Route 141, Akin and his family own nine acres. Akin’s family has applied to construct six homes on the land. His spokesman said Akin’s land had no bearing on his support for the earmarks. “It is going to be helpful as a connector but not helpful for residential property values whatsoever,” he said.

Sound a little fishy to you too? Well then, if you’re interested in still more Akin related dirt, bend your mind around what he said in this video:

I’m in a three-way primary for the US Senate. I’ve gone to people and asked for their support, their help, or their endorsement, and some people say yes. They write me a decent check. I remember that. The people that I thought were friends that tell me to go away because they are supporting someone else, I remember that. You know, I can remember back to 12 years ago. You remember who’s helping you. That’s one way that people get to know congressmen and senators.

The video is titled, “Akin bragged about being a congressman for sale,” and I can surely see how somebody might think that – but could anybody really be that dumb?

But enough of elaborating on the soot that adorms our pot, Todd Akin. I can’t help wondering if this risky new ad has anything to do with desperation. Claire McCaskill’s campaign has just released an internal poll showing her up over Akin by nine points. As Daily Kos’s Steve Singiser observes:

Now that Republican gaffe machine Todd Akin cannot be replaced on the ballot, you have to love the fact that the campaign of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill decided to lower the boom with a new poll out of the Show-Me State. Her poll shows that she holds a pretty solid 50-41 lead over Akin. But what is even more awesome: it shows that she had a six-point lead in an early September survey. One that…ahem…was never released. Well played, team McCaskill. Well played!

Rep. Todd Akin hasn’t changed. His recent “gaffes” are no different from scores of similar incidents during his decade in the House – and, in fairness, to call them gaffes is to mispeak since the congressman seems to be doing no more than expressing his essential self and deepest beliefs. If he’s generating lots more media noise right now, it’s because the level of attention accorded to an insignificant, mostly do-nothing, House member differs from the spotlight that is shone on a candidate for a significant state-wide office. The new situation in which he finds himself is also heightened by the struggle that is currently being waged for the control of the Senate. Akin can no longer fade into the woodwork of a House of Representatives that harbors numerous other GOP ideologues who are just as if not more bizarre than he (think Joe Walsh, Virginia Fox, etc.).

Given this context, I was certainly expecting the level of attention to become more intense. But, I have to admit, I was not expecting Akin to become a such a national byword that his new-found ignominy could be used as an overt weapon against other GOPers. Take, for instance, this ad, produced by New York Democratic Congressional candidate Dan Maffei in his campaign against Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-25), who co-sponsored a bill with Akin that would have redefined rape as “forcible” rape only:  

More power to Maffei I say, and I hope that the example of Todd Akin, who so aptly expresses the plain, unvarnished anti-women agenda of today’s Republican party,  helps to wake up complacent Americans who think that the status quo will hold with no effort from them. For those who think “legitimate rape” is a awkward fluke, back in January of 2011 I wrote about the Akin-Buerkle bill, HR3:

Abortion is, of course, still legal in the U.S., and would continue to be so if HR3 is passed since it only pertains to restrictions on public funding. Its provisions are far reaching enough, though, that, if passed, it could have a vastly more far-reaching impact, even for those of us who rely on private insurance. Since the 86% of insurance plans that offer abortion coverage would no longer be tax-deductible for employers, the number of those plans would almost inevitably dwindle along with affordable access to abortion for the middle classes as well as the poor, who, at first glance, would seem to be most likely to be seriously affected.

It is the rape and incest provisions, however, that offer the best picture of the sclerotic mindset behind this proposed legislation. HR3 would restrict abortion funding for individuals who find themselves pregnant as a result of coercion or intimidation, sexually abused children, and pregnant rape victims who were drugged, given alcohol, or who are mentally impaired. Since HR3 rejects current federal definitions of rape and does not define forcible rape explicitly, it is even possible that all cases of rape could be addressed in such a way as to fall outside the exemptions. As for incest, our GOP representatives evidently think it’s just fine if the victim is over 18.

If Missourians send Todd Akin to the Senate, they’ll only have themselves to blame for the consequences.  

Todd Akin’s trying to say something – not quite sure what. Goes to show that it helps to worry about the filler words in between the Christian dominionist pander words:

This ad is being aired in progressive blogs around the country (I’ve encountered it three times already in national blogs). Ask yourself just why progressives are giving free time to the rightest of the rightwingers attempting to crawl into the Senate? Then watch the video again and if you can stop laughing long enough to think about it, all will be clear.

What does it say about Missouri that this bozo’s currently polling ahead of McCaskill? Are folks who’ve been scared silly about fantasmagorical socialist dictators and Obamacare’s fabeled death panels so ready to knee-jerk that they’re kicking themselves comatose?

*Title corrected.

Take a look at the three ads that Claire McCaskill recently mounted against, respectively, the three GOPers locked in a primary contest to be her challenger this fall. (Michael Bersin has posted all three ads here.) Now consider Politico’s claim that the ads reveal that McCaskill would prefer to face Rep. Todd Akin (R-2) next fall. In regard to the Akin ad Politico‘s David Catenese writes:

While the McCaskill campaign is framing the spot as part of an aggressive effort to go on offense against Akin and his two GOP rivals ahead of their Aug. 7 primary, the precise language invoked is simultaneously meant to send a signal to Republican primary voters.

A narrator carefully uses a string of descriptions designed to appeal to conservatives before landing blows meant to undercut his appeal with the general electorate.

According to Catenese, the suite of ads build up Akin’s conservative credentials while savaging attacking his rivals, John Brunner and Sarah Steelman, in a way that will render them less appealing to the wingers in Missouri.*

While the entire GOP field is notably lame, Akin’s been a do-lilttle-to-nothing congressman, notable mostly for his evangelical fanaticism and extreme right-wing ideology. The few times he’s actually gotten national attention, it’s usually because he’s done something that suggests he wouldn’t be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. In a state-wide race, he might indeed be easy pickings.

*Sentence edited slightly.

For your reading pleasure, I offer the text of the latest press release from Claire McCaskill’s senatorial campaign below. For a little context, note that McCaskill isn’t a Johnny-come-lately to the issue of campaign financial disclosure; as her press release notes, she was an early supporter of legislation, such as the failed Disclose Act, that would have required corporations to disclose their political donations, and has consistently decried the effects of the Citizens United decision.  

Nor is McCaskill alone in her concern about the efforts of anonymous corporate entities to buy the election in 2012. Yesterday, the Obama re-election campaign entered the fray against Carl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, asking the Federal Election Commission to require the Rove organization to register as a political entity and disclose its donors. For the record, Crossroads, along with the Chamber of Commerce, mounted early, intense and patently dishonest attacks on McCaskill. We’ve written about the nasty situation here and here.

McCaskill Calls on New SuperPAC to Disclose Its Donors

McCaskill has consistently called for greater transparency, disclosure in campaign finance



St. Louis, Mo.-The McCaskill for Missouri campaign released the following statement today in response to news reports about a new SuperPAC called “Heart of America” PAC.

“Claire is adamant – outside groups need to disclose their donors and the same goes for groups looking to support her, if not more so,” said Erik Dorey, McCaskill for Missouri spokesman. “Whether they’re secret money groups that are never required to disclose, or a group like this one that has quarterly reporting requirements, Claire is making herself crystal clear: disclose your donors.”

Claire has consistently called on outside groups to disclose their donors and has repeatedly decried the Citizens United ruling that allowed some groups, such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, Americans for Prosperity, the Chamber of Commerce and 60+, to raise unlimited funds without ever disclosing their donors.

In January, Claire sent a letter to all three of her opponents asking them to join her in calling on any outside group that spends money in this race to disclose their donors and she stands by that today.

Unfortunately, none of her opponents ever responded to Claire’s letter, or her challenge to outside groups.

According to the News-Leader, this new group indicated it is planning to disclose its donors when quarterly reporters are due July 15.

I assume that none of you missed the part of McCaskill’s missive about the failure of all of her opponents to respond to her invitation to stand up for honest and transparent election funding? Of course, we all know that integrity is in short supply in the political world – but when did it become okay to just ignore a challenge to one’s supply of same and hope nobody notices?

Under the title “Legalized Bribery,” Think Progress reports today on the activities of the YG Network, “a secret-money outside political group run by former aides to House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).”  Essentially, this nominally independent group rewards GOP pols who play ball with the house leadership. According to the Think Progress reporter, compliant legislators may be rewarded by “independent” expenditures on their behalf.

And guess which member of the House of Representatives was chosen to illustrate the efforts of the YG Network?  Take a look at the ad below and find out:

Indeed – that anemic sounding, good little girl voice belongs to none other than Vicky Hartzler. Of course, it is unlikely that Hartzler would ever defy the GOP leadership, even without such an incentive to continue to be as tractable as she has been – but the whole system whereby she rated this help is more than troubling. Think Progress quotes Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center to the effect that:

When you allow unlimited special interest money in politics, this type of behavior should be expected. Criticism is fair, but never the less, its predictable. This is the world that this Supreme Court majority has given us with the Citizens United decision. It’s troubling, but entirely predictable.

Even more troubling is the likelihood of conversations behind closed doors – threats of huge corporate-funded independent spending campaigns made [for those who don’t act in the corporation’s interest on a given piece of legislation]. And much of it, we will never hear about.

Nice bunch of folks Vicky pals around with. Is this the type of government Tea Partiers (i.e., “We the people”) who suppported Hartzler thought she’d represent – essentially a return to the bad old days of Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt handing out favors and strong-arming anyone in the ranks with enough gumption to stand up to them?  

By the way – if you’re interested in the substance of the ad, which refers to a 2.3% excise tax to be imposed on the sale of medical devices, which will be used to fund Obamacare, take a look at this analysis of the tax’s impacts prepared by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Of course, when we’re all saturated with “taxmegeddon” ads, who cares about facts.  

Because she did her bit for them (h/t Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog):

It’s a six figure ad-buy so maybe it’ll help. Alan Abramowitz predicts that the GOP will take the Senate along with the House in 2012 – and given the general consensus that McCaskill’s seat is among the most endangered, she needs all the help she can get.

Abramowitz does add this qualification:

The Senate forecast especially should be interpreted cautiously because the Senate model has a fairly large error term due to the small number of seats in each election.  And of course, it is still early and both the generic ballot and the presidential approval variables could change over the next few months.

So we gotta hope and keep on keeping on. Help from groups like VoteVets to neutralize the big money guys in organizations like Crossroads could still pull it out for McCaskill.  Don’t forget her biggest advantage – the weak GOP senatorial primary lineup which has to be one of the saddest bunch of losers in Missouri history.

Worth noting: Ezra Klein doesn’t think it’ll make much difference what happens to the Senate – we’re doomed to the current gridlocked status quo no matter what, thanks to the GOP House which is not likely to change – as long as Obama wins the presidency. Otherwise, it’ll be an orgy of right wing activism.  I’m not sure I agree  – the Senate is an imperfect buffer, but it’s still stands between the House and the total congressional control by the one percenters who’ve managed to buy up most of the available government.