Seems like Jason Kander’s qualifications and persistence have struck a larger Democratic nerve as he runs to take the the Senate seat currently occupied by GOPer Roy Blunt. Roll Call speculates that Kander is one of:

… two other Democratic recruits who could forge paths to victory in the right political environment: Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona and Secretary of State Jason Kander in Missouri. Both are adept politicians who face strong GOP incumbents in states that lean Republican in presidential years, but could swing the Democrats’ way in the event of unforced Republican errors.

The Roll Call writers, Emily Cahn and former Missourian Eli Yokley, also discuss the potential of the presidential race to influence the outcome for candidates like Kander:

An unpalatable GOP presidential nominee could also shift the tide towards Democrats, giving them an opening down the ballot. With businessman Donald Trump – who has broken nearly every convention in running a presidential campaign as he’s offended significant segments of the electorate – as the Republican front-runner, there’s a chance that could happen.

There’s even more evidence that Kander is getting some serious attention. Even though the Daily Kos analysis of the potential outcome of the 2015-16 Senate races lists the Kander/Blunt race as “likely Republican,” they define that category as a race in which the GOP has “a strong advantage and is likely to win, though the race has the potential to become more competitive.”

That’s relatively good news given how entrenched Blunt has become over the years. Missouri voters (and the Kander campaign) just have to activate that potential.  And of course, given the  current polling results, as Cahn and Yokley suggest, it’s possible the GOP base itself just might take care of the whole Trump issue in a way that would help Kander and maybe free us from Blunt’s version of pay-to-play legislating.

Just to give you an idea about what a Kander victory could mean to us, here’s the text of an email he send out to his supporters today:

Did you watch last night’s Republican presidential debate?

For a good portion of the proceedings, the candidates were all attempting to outdo each other over who would shutdown the government fastest in an effort to deny women health care needs like mammograms, Pap tests, and STD screenings.

And the truth is, our dysfunctional U.S. Senate is steamrolling straight toward this fight. It’s going to happen.

But there are a few people who can stop this travesty by publicly standing up to bombasts in the chamber like Ted Cruz, and one of them is my opponent, a member of Republican leadership, Senator Roy Blunt.

Call on Senator Roy Blunt to tell Ted Cruz to stop his crusade to shutdown the government over women’s health care.

A government shutdown would cost our country billions of dollars, cut the paychecks of millions of workers, and possibly cause delays for many veterans who rely on disability pay and education benefits.

Senator Blunt has the power to stop the Ted Cruz wing of the Republican Party. If you make your voice heard, I am hopeful that he will.

Although Blunt has been one of the leaders of the effort to defund Planned Parenthood and has shown a willingness in the past to attach unrelated partisan legislation to must-pass appropriation bills, he has already spoken out against using the Planned Parenthood fracus as an excuse to shutdown the government. He might, as Kander suggests, be open to constituent opinion. His most recent statements indicate that he is trying to have his metaphorical cake (pandering to anti-abortion Republicans) and eat it too (stopping short of a shutdown throwdown):

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of GOP leadership who also faces voters next year in his conservative state, said it makes sense to try to push a provision in a spending bill to defund Planned Parenthood on the Senate floor, even if there’s little chance of success.

“Sometimes, you have to go through an exercise in futility a time or two to truly prove it is an exercise in futility,” Blunt said.

But Blunt cautioned: “What I wouldn’t want to do is change the topic here from focusing on the conduct of Planned Parenthood to focusing on a shutdown … If we made a strategic mistake here, it would be changing the topic.”

This strategy is dangerous and could easily backfire. Kander is to be commended for using his candidacy to urge Blunt’s constituents to call upon the Senator to back away from the  extremists in his party. Kander should especially be commended for his civil and conciliatory tone toward his rival for office. It is clear that Kander cares more for the outcome than reaping political advantage by sliming the eminently slimeable Blunt.

It is also clear which of these two has the potential to be a real statesman, a man worthy of representing Missourians. And it isn’t the guy who’s trying to balance craziness against common sense and in the process risking the well-being of the country. Speaking of “unforced errors, maybe it’s Blunt’s participation in the GOP shutdown stunts that will help shift the balance in Missouri – and Jason Kander’s “I think I can” will become “Yes, I did it.”

* Last sentence edited for clarity.

Jason Kander, Roy Blunt’s Democratic challenger for his Senate seat, is fielding a petition on his campaign Website to prevent the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from closing. Here’s what Kander has to say about the insane willingness of Republicans in the Congress to sacrifice DHS to their desire to send a “message” to the president – and maybe to the crazies in their base – on the issue of immigration:

Tomorrow at midnight, funding expires for the Department of Homeland Security.

As Homeland Security Secretary Johnson said, it is “indulging in a fantasy to believe you can shut down the Department of Homeland Security and there be no impact to homeland security itself.”

Add your name and tell Congress: Stop playing games with our national security and vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security before Friday night at midnight.

Compare Kander’s serious approach to the don’t-bother-me, who-gives-a-damn attitude of GOP insider Blunt, who voted against the “clean” bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently brought up in the Senate in order to avoid the shutdown:

“This is a debate over funding a part of government so essential that if funding is not there, almost all of the employees show up anyway. They’re considered essential,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said recently on the Senate floor.

Except that folks who know, know that’s not true:

While the most critical DHS functions – such as border and airport security and immigration enforcement – would continue, a review of the 2013 shutdown showed that some effects will be felt acutely in areas where the department already faces problems.

[…]

The 2013 shutdown provides a template for how DHS would be affected this time. A 2013 Congressional Research Service report found that an estimated 31,295 DHS employees were furloughed, but about 85 percent of the department’s workforce remained on the job.

The report said that “the total number of employees furloughed was relatively small compared with the overall size of the department,” but it pointed to a number of significant effects.

DHS procurement “activities were disrupted to some extent,” the report said, noting that DHS is the sixth-largest federal agency for procurement spending.

Other effects included the suspension of E-Verify, a program businesses use to determine the work eligibility of new employees, and a shutdown of the department’s civil rights and civil liberties complaint lines.

In the cyber arena – where DHS plays a key role in combatting attacks aimed at civilian federal networks and communicating with critical industries – there would be further impacts from a shutdown, DHS officials said.

The operational problems of the potential shutdown, however, are separate from the fact that a rich politician like Blunt is so willing to casually dismiss damage that shutting down jobs – or pay for those who, like a reverse Wempy, have to work today for a hamburger tomorrow – assuming that they can make it until tomorrow. At the very least, attitudes like Blunt’s isn’t gonna do a lot of good for morale, and, as I remember from my days as a manager, morale is a big part of how well things run.

And for what? A Republican colleague of Blunt, Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, describes the bone of contention succinctly: “Hopefully we’re gonna end the attaching of bullshit to essential items of the government.” Get that? Even sane GOPers thinks the tantrum is over a pile of steaming BS.

But wait a minute. Doesn’t Blunt usually like to pose as a sane GOPer? Is he really so scared of a rightwing challenger in 2016 – or just rightwing indifference come voting time – that he’ll sacrifice the good of the country to protect jingoistic BS? It seems to me that he needs to take to heart the rest of Senator Kirk’s comments: “In the long-run, if you are blessed with the majority, you’re blessed with the power to govern. If you’re gonna govern, you have to act responsibly.” Kander isn’t even the junior Senator from Missouri yet and he’s trying to do just that. What’s wrong with Blunt? You think he really just doesn’t give a damn as long as he can get the Big Money boys to keep paying his bills?

Republicans like to tell stores about being “fiscal conservatives” who oppose irresponsible spending. They’ve managed in the process to impede economic growth while successfully fighting off efforts to cut that large segment of our irresponsible spending which takes the form of subsidies to highly profitable industries like Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and big what-have-you – which big entities often happen, in turn, to be very generous when it comes time to fund political campaigns.  

Nowhere, though does GOP hypocrisy show through more than in the recent budget and debt level negotiations. The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog today identifies the members of the exclusively Republican “default caucus,” made up of the 135 representatives and 17 senators who voted first for the omnibus spending bill, and then against raising the debt limit that would pay for it. They essentially decided that the United States should not pay the bills that they themselves had voted to run up. Try doing that at home, Mr. and Mrs. Average American. As Wonkblog’s Christopher Ingraham puts it, “the fact a significant faction in Congress can vote to run up debt, refuse to pay for it, and bill themselves as “fiscal conservatives” shows just how much that term has lost its meaning.”

I would suggest that a better label than “default caucus” for these lawmakers would be “deadbeat caucus.” That, after all, is what we call folks who don’t want to pay their bills. There are several members of the deadbeat caucus from Missouri:

Senator Roy Blunt (R)

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2)

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3)

Rep. Vickky Hartzler (R-4)

Rep. Sam Graves (R-6)

You can click on the names of Representatives listed above that have links to go to their press releases designed to tell us why voting for the spending bill they later refused to fund was such a good idea – not that they mention anything about the relationship between the two votes. I think that they hope we won’t figure that one out. Sam Graves simply ignores his yea vote on the omnibus funding bill, but did issue a statement patting himself on the back for voting against the extension of the debt limit. His reason for the nay note? He somehow seems to think that the debt limit extension vote is the place to cut the spending he approved in the earlier vote. So what do  you think? Are they all dumb as posts? Or cynical panderers? Whatever else they are, they’re certainly willing to play fast and loose with the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government – along with our welfare.

Ingraham allows as how those folks who voted against both the spending bill and the debt limit hike necessary to accommodate it should at least be admired for their consistency. And they are consistent, but you might temper your admiration when you remember that it stems from a totally nutty and discredited conception of economics, to wit, austerian theories that these folks probably don’t even understand apart from platitudes abut the “free market” and the evils of “big government.” Nothing but extreme economic ignorance coupled with total irresponsibility could explain their willingness to risk the disastrous consequences of default on the debt. Consequently, in recognition of the harm they do to us all, I’d like to label these folks the “nutjob caucus.” (You’re probably all aware that many members of the deadbeat caucus are, on other occasions, only too happy to claim membership in the nutjob caucus.) In Missouri, the members of the budgetary nutjob caucus includes:

Rep. Billy Long (R-7)

Re. Jason Smith (R-8)

So what do we call congresspeople who swallowed some of the bitter pills in the omnibus bill (cuts to food stamps, anyone?) in the interest of breaking gridlock and staving off another expensive government shutdown, and then, like responsible adults, voted to extend the debt limit to pay for the spending they had just authorized? Real legislators – you know, the people who are doing the hard job of governing without temper  tantrums. And it also looks like this time around we call them Democrats – including Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who didn’t vote on the omnibus spending bill for whatever reason – maybe a few of those bitter pills were just too bitter – but came through when it was time to raise the debt limit and honor the spending decisions that his colleagues, including many in the GOP delegation, had already made.  

I admit it. I like making my own end-of-the-year lists, and I like to see how my opinions line up with other list-makers. It’s silly maybe, but it can help to refine one’s perspective. So here’s my first end-of-the-year list which names the political actors and/or acts that struck me as the most absurd and/or inexcusable during 2013, hence the titular worst of the worst. (In order to balance the negativity, though, I’ll be following it with a list of the best of the best.) It goes without saying that my selections are entirely subjective and reflect my opinion only – nobody else is implicated by my judgement, although I invite anyone so inclined to take issue with my selections or offer their contrary assessments in the comments. And with that, away we go:

1. Rex Sinquefield: Sinquefield is a retired billionaire financier whose hobby is buying up Missouri state government in order to provide a staging ground for his libertarian theology. He plays a long game, lavishing tons of dollars on politicians of every stripe as long as they show even some teeny-tiny signs of sympathy for a small sliver of his goals.  What does he want long-term? Just a Missouri with all the attractions of the brutish Randian paradise for wealthy Übermenschen that excites today’s conservatives.

But hey, perverting the political process for the benefit of the rich and powerful is nothing new and, on its own, wouldn’t merit more than an honorable mention among the worst of Missouri’s recent worst. Mr. Sinquefield has been taking full advantage of the Supreme Court’s destructive endorsement of the idea that money equals speech for a long time. This year, however, plantation master Sinquefield found it necessary to crack the whip; he quickly helped launch a lawsuit to stop a campaign finance reform bill that would have reduced the decibels of his green-backed free speech to a level more in line with that enjoyed by less wealthy citizens of the state. And what does he do with this free-speech? He lies – as in his recent Forbes Magazine op-ed, an overtly counterfactual apotheosis of Kansas Governor Brownback’s tax free policies.

2. The Missouri anti-Obamacare obstructionists: And by obstructionists I mean the Republicans who control the state legislature. Thanks to these jerks, 193,000 Missourians will be out in the healthcare cold. These are the people who don’t make enough money to qualify for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges since those in their income range were were meant to to get coverage through an extension of Medicaid eligibility, an extension that the state’s GOP, taking advantage of another gift from our conservative Supreme Court, have refused to enact. The same folks have refused to set up Obamacare exchanges, tried to hinder use of the federal exchange and pushed one dishonest story after another about the imagined perils of the law. Talk all you want about the initial failures of the Obamacrare Website or Obama’s rather tame “lie of the year,” the folks who’ve done the real damage are quite simply the politicos who are busy patting themselves on the back because they have saved Missouri’s poor from the moral hazard represented by actual health care.

3. Members of the Missouri GOP congressional delegation: These folks, many of them multi-millionaires, came home to enjoy their cushy Christmas celebrations after refusing to extend benefits for unemployed American workers. As a result, last Saturday 21,329 jobless Missourians lost the meager stipend (averaging $242) that often meant keeping food on the table. If nothing is done, 35,400 more workers will lose this cushion in the first months of 2014. The people’s Republican representatives felt free to cut benefits off even though currently there are, according to some sources, three applicants for most jobs and over 4 million long-term unemployed nationally. Missouri’s current unemployment rate is 6.1%.

4. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2): Wagner makes it onto this list due to her emergence as one of the aspiring leaders of the GOP House membership, in which role she stood behind the recent government shutdown, welcoming the “fight” on behalf of “the American people,” while simultaneously trying to lay the blame on the Democrats who, for some inexplicable reason, wouldn’t roll over and play dead after winning a major election. This shutdown cost taxpayers $24 billion at a conservative estimate. Thanks alot, Ann. If Wagner represents the new face of the GOP, the concept needs some work.

5. Governor Jay Nixon: Nixon arguably doesn’t belong on a list filled with boneheads and charlatans – but he landed here because I expect more of him when it comes to looking out for the long-term welfare of the state as opposed to selling us out for a short-term, politically attractive “get.” I’m talking about the Boeing giveaway here. There’s plenty of evidence that massive incentives such as those offered to Boeing are bad economic policy, particularly in a state that like Missouri is already starved for revenue. It leaves a particularly bad taste when one takes into account the sort of underhanded back-room deals that seem to have been required to bring it into being. But no matter how you cut it, $3.5 billion in tax breaks is a bit much to pay in order to buy bragging rights for a handful of jobs – especially when we’re talking about jobs that were probably never going to come  here in the first place. When politicians you have no choice but to trust are influenced by corrupt, corporatist thinking about the allocation of cost and benefit, it makes it just that much harder to believe that change will ever be possible. You want to know why Democrats don’t turn out in off-year elections, why there’s an enthusiasm gap? Look no further.

6. The Greater St. Louis Labor Council: This one hurts. It hurts because it’s more evidence of the demise of labor. It’s clear that Boeing’s effort to spike a bidding war for its 777X manufacturing facility, as the Kansas City Star’s Mary Sanchez noted, is “just leverage for Boeing Co. to go after the jugular of a labor union.”  Now, I’ve always believed that what made unions work was a little thing called solidarity – and that its exercise is not defined in regional terms. Yet not only were local unions willing to undercut their brothers and sisters in Washington, but they quickly squelched Gordon King, a representative of the  local Machinists District 837, when he attempted to stand up and do what union members are supposed to do for each other. When it becomes “my workers first” and not “all workers together,” unions have truly lost the war, and the unbecoming eagerness of the local labor council to kiss up to Boeing is just one more step along the way. I understand the desperation that has brought our local labor leaders to this point, but it still hurts.

7. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4): No list of worsts would be complete with the stench of hypocrisy – of which Hartzler is redolent. And make no mistake, it takes chutzpah to vote to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), part of the safety net for the poor, wile keeping sacrosanct massive agricultural subsidies for rich farmers that Hartzler and her family continue to receive. Hartzler, author of a book titled Running God’s Way that is described as “a must-read for everyone interested in serving God through political involvement,” has shown herself again and again to be unwilling to put into practice Christ’s admonition in Matthew 25:34-36 to minister to those in need, and has, instead, allied herself with the wealthy about whom Christ declared “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 11:25).

8. Brian Nieves: In a state legislature filled with chuckleheads and bozos, if one had to single out one supreme example of the resentment-fueled, raging white doofus, it would have to be state Senator Brian “Mad Dog” Nieves. Sharia law, Agenda 21, drones spying on farmers, gold-buggery, tentherism, you name it, if it’s crazy Nieves is for it. Add to the mix his eagerness to physically and verbally attack opponents, constituents, you name it, and you’ve got a disaster ready to happen. He’s on this year’s list, though, because he’s one of the brains (and I use the term loosely) who responded to the Sandy Hook massacre by pushing a gun bill so irresponsible that even members of his own party ultimately refused to over-ride its veto by the Governor. In his own words:

… If we, as a nation, would collectively take a few short minutes, maybe even an hour, to actually research what our Founding Fathers said, in their own words, about gun ownership and gun control, we would see that what we arbitrarily refer to as “Assault Rifles” would fit squarely with what they wanted us to have! …

Now that constitutional scholar Nieves has devoted an hour or so to researching the issue, I should probably run out and buy my assault weapon today! Then I can wave it around and act tough just like “Mad Dog.” Just in case you’re worried, there’ll be lots more fun and games ahead. And like last year, very little attention to important business.

Slightly edited for clarity.

All of Missouri’s Republican House delegation joined the 144 Republican House members who voted no on the budgetary continuing resolution sent to them from the Senate, which amounts to five votes from Missouri to keep the shutdown going. To a man or woman, these members of the Missouri Shutdown Hall of Shame tried to justify their votes with references to those all-purpose boogymen, the deficit and “out of control spending” (see also here).

To a man or woman, they have all also refused to admit they initially went to war with the nation’s well-being for no reason other than to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – even though the ACA reduces the deficit long-term. Nor are they willing to admit that the main ACA concession they demanded as a sop when it became clear that the rest of the Congress and most of the country regarded their anti-Obamacare jihad as laughable, a repeal of the medical devices tax, was a special interest boondogle that would have undercut the ability of the ACA keep government costs down. All that reasonable bystanders can conclude from this is that our GOPers are either dishonest, severely deluded, or dumber than fenceposts.

According to S&P estimates, the antics of these shutdown diehards cost the U.S. economy $24 billion and cut 0.6% off of yearly fourth quarter GDP growth. Tell me how this reflects concern with the economy. Think Progress has compiled a partial list of government expenditures that could have been financed by the amount of money lost in the shutdown:

— The net cost of to the government from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP): $24 billion

— The Department of Agriculture’s proposed budget: $22.6 billion

— NASA’s approved budget: $16.6 billion

— All air transportation programs, including the Federal Aviation Administration, security, research, and other costs: $21.9 billion.

— The Child Tax Credit: $22.1 billion.

— The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (formally known as welfare): $17.7 billion.

— The cost of Head Start, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Women Infants and Children (WIC) program combined: $25.2 billion

I hope you noticed that all or parts of these expenditures were or are bitterly opposed by these same GOPers who insist that we can’t afford them. Nevertheless, they’re all more than willing to run up similar costs in the service of empty symbolic gestures meant to impress their base. But as Think Progress also noted, these pols have been making the same types of choices from the getgo:

The shutdown was just the latest budget crisis that has been costly to the economy. A recent report found that the uncertainty created by fights over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling that have cropped up since 2010 has cost the economy nearly a million jobs.

And, to cap it all off, there are already rumblings from the GOP crazy caucus, with whom Missouri’s GOPers seem to have allied themselves, that they’ll be willing to give the ol’ shutdown routine a go once again early next year when yesterday’s agreement runs out. However, as Michael Tomasky wrote today, one thing may have changed:

. . . At least the American people did get to see what assassins the Republicans are. That was valuable. Many of us have been trying to say for many years now about Washington’s polarization and dysfunction that yes, both sides are to blame, there are no Boy Scouts here, but the sides are not remotely equally to blame, and this is a crucial point, and journalists and commentators who keep insisting on framing things this way out of some devotion to “balance” that is out of whack with the facts of reality are disserving the republic; lying, basically. I don’t think now any commentator can seriously maintain that fiction. . . .

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) wants all her constituents to know that she’s been playing a leading role in getting the government back open – and I’m not referring to the twisted logic whereby she claims that when she and the rest of her crazy party voted for a continuing resolution that defunded Obamacare, they were voting to keep the government open. No, this time she’s really, really proud of her prominent place in a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about Thursday’s House GOP palaver with the President which she, as Chair of the House freshman class, attended. In fact she’s so pleased with herself that she sent those of us on her mailing list an email copy of the article.

Whooeeee! Now we’ll know whom to thank when they finally open the government back up. Wagner’s already asserting her claim to a place in the history books, breathlessly gushing, “”it was an amazing moment, and it was a great privilege to be part of it.” A great moment indeed, and one that Rep. Wagner might never have been able to savour had she and her party not gone whole-hog Tea Party and shut down almost the entire government shebang, evidently for no other reason than the pure hell of it. Or so at least one might conclude based on the recent GOP dithering about what it would take to get them to go back to doing what they’re supposed to do.

The article quotes Wagner’s assurances that there was no blaming or name-calling at the meeting. Does it strike anyone as odd that she might have thought the GOP House delegation would be greeted with or would demonstrate rudeness at a business meeting? Of course, some have speculated that the reason that Speaker Boehner did not permit the entire Republican caucus to meet with the President, who had initially requested such a meeting, was that he might be worried about members who have, in the past, shown a proclivity to yell insults at the President like, say, “you lie” at important public events. God only knows what some of the more obstreperous members might do in private.

Also notable in Wagner’s carefully measured account of the meeting is the implication that the wise and purposeful GOPers ran the show:

Wagner said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other GOP leaders spelled out an agenda they wanted addressed in coming weeks.

“We want budget negotiators to tackle the big issues like growth policy, tax reform, entitlement reform and things having to do with the big-picture issue of our $17 trillion debt,” she said.

I don’t really think so. Michael Tomasky presents us with a different but probably far more accurate reading of the meeting that Wagner has attempted to decorate with GOP happy faces:

… Then, late in the day, the Not-So-Magic Bus of 20 Republicans rolled up to the White House, and Boehner put … well, put something on the table to Obama, something involving a six-week increase in the debt limit but who knows what else, and Obama said: not yet.

Differences of perception such as this inevitably result when people like Wagner convince themselves that real negotiations can take place when one of the participants is holding a bomb. While she and her colleagues may be betting that fear of harming lots of innocent bystanders may constrain their bargaining partners to such an extent that they will submit to government by intimidation, she shouldn’t forget that if that bomb does go off, the guys holding it are going to be obliterated.