How do you motivate a Republican whose Congressional seat is being threatened? Well, if you're Incumbent Retention Czar Mike Rogers (MI-08), head of the NRCC's "Patriot Program", you give 'em a colonial soldier bobblehead.
I'm totally not kidding.
Rogers uses not just the stick, but also the carrot. Make that the bobblehead. He gives a Colonial soldier bobblehead doll to the "patriot of the week" who has worked hard to meet his or her goals.
"It's a huge success," Rogers said. "I get members now going, 'Hey, man, when am I getting my bobblehead?' I love that thing."
I hate to give Brian Rooney more attention than he deserves because the only thing that would be worse than Tim Walberg regaining his seat in MI-07 would be if Brian Rooney were to succeed in defeating Mark Schauer. But his latest "press release" screams to be addressed.
It is a nauseating example of exploiting one's children, in this case a child with a serious medical condition, for personal political advancement.
Meet Brian Rooney. Brian Rooney is running for the Republican nomination in MI-07 this year. He has only lived in Michigan since 2007 and he recently moved into MI-07 in order to run for this seat. Even his main Republican opponent, Tim Walberg, doesn't have much nice to say about him:
Walberg questioned if Rooney runs whether he can win over voters if he's just moved into their district.
"He is going to have to move in as a carpet bagger," Walberg said. "Unless you are a Kennedy or a Clinton, you don't do well as a carpet bagger."
At the Western Washtenaw Democrats meeting last Friday, Mark Schauer came out strongly in favor of pushing the Democrats' health care bill through the Senate without the standard requirement of 60 votes.
Ahhh. Finally. A Republican admitting that the threshold to pass legislation through the Senate in this country is no longer the Constitutionally-mandated 51 votes. Now it's 60.
For a Republican liar, you gotta give the guy credit for a brief moment of honesty.
My former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers stopped by the offices of the Livingston Press & Argus in Livingston County, Mich. this week to throw some poop on health care reform. Not only did he throw poop, he told several bald-faced lies including this one:
He said a government-appointed panel's conclusion that women need fewer mammograms at certain ages would be incorporated in the bills.
Rogers, himself a cancer survivor, said the government shouldn't dictate who has access to mammograms.
"I said, 'Oh, my gosh. They just sentenced to death 36,000 American women.'"
McCotter is either crazy or one of those professional conservative liars Steve Benen warns us are busy conning the country. Actually, crazy liar is probably more accurate.
So, what did McCotter say this time? According to MLive, McCotter "issued a statement last week expressing concern that Democrat's proposed health care legislation may encourage assisted suicide."
"This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law."
"...With three states having legalized physician-assisted suicide, this provision could create a slippery slope for a more permissive environment for euthanasia, mercy-killing and physician-assisted suicide because it does not clearly exclude counseling about the supposed benefits of killing oneself.
"This is very dangerous," McCotter said Friday. "We, in Michigan, have already fought back an attempted assisted suicide several years ago. And yet you see that the people who support this are trying to use this bill to advance this agenda."
What nonsense. Here's the bill, McCotter. Try reading it. There's no mention of assisted suicide or euthanasia, but there is a provision that would "provide Medicare coverage for the work of doctors who advise patients on life-sustaining treatment and "end-of-life services," including hospice care."
MLive points out that FactCheck calls the claim nonsense too.
In truth, that section of the bill would require Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions helping seniors to plan for end-of-life medical care, including designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice and making decisions about life-sustaining treatment. It would not require doctors to counsel that their patients refuse medical intervention.
Furthermore, the bill would not make these sessions mandatory. Counseling would be patient-initiated and voluntary.
The only slippery slope McCotter needs to worry about is the one leading to the unemployment line. His constituents deserve professionalism and honesty, not baseless scare tactics.
Republicans think the Democrats' health care plan is a Faustian web of Washington bureaucracy. To make their case they're doing exactly what they did in 1994, when President Clinton unveiled his plan, they're circulating a chart with lots of pretty colors, boxes, lines and acronyms. It's meant to confuse people and make light of the Democrats' plan.
It might make for a lovely board game but it makes for horrible health care system.
McCotter obviously never had to deal with HMO's, referrals, denial of claims, etc. Or, as Jonathan Cohn put it:
But these charts--and, more important, the Republicans who use them as propoganda--tend to ignore one inconvenient fact: American health care is already complex. Ridiculously complex. Thanks to decades of haphazard, disorganized growth, it's evolved into a mind-numbing web of institutions, agencies, businesses, and individual actors. And while that may be self-evident to anybody who's ever had to deal with, say, a billing dispute between an insurer and hospital, it's easy to lose sight of that when the discussion is all about what reform might do--rather than what health care would be like without it.
TNR developed their own chart (with the help of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation) illustrating just how byzantine our system has become. McCotter should check out.
Actually, if bureaucracy is a problem for Republicans, they might want to get on board with single-payer.
Single payer reform... would eliminate the bewildering patchwork of private insurance plans with their exorbitant overhead and profits, as well as the costly paperwork burdens they impose on providers. These savings on bureaucracy - nearly $400 billion annually - are sufficient to cover all of the uninsured and to provide first dollar coverage for all Americans.
Sen. John Ensign's confession that he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff is a good news/bad news story. It's good news for Romney, Gingrich, Palin and other Republicans hoping to unseat Obama, but it's bad news for a party that continues to lose voters.
The Republican Party didn't make a deal with the devil.
It made a deal with God, or at least people who said they were God's representatives - a certain class of very political and ideological preachers.
The deal, engineered by Republican operatives such as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, went like this: Be against gays and abortion and for prayer in the schools, and in return, those preachers would proclaim the GOP the party of God and deliver millions of suburban and rural voters - enough to win elections for three decades.
But the deal carried a risk: Any behavior by Republican officeholders or public figures that seemed at odds with a certain kind of Old Testament morality - a tryst in an airport bathroom, a painkiller addiction, a sexual harassment lawsuit - and voters might feel betrayed and manipulated.
And the deal would collapse.
The last couple of elections show that the deal has been collapsing for sometime, and it's not just among Bible believing Republicans. As the LVS points out, voters are leaving the party because of their one unforgivable sin: Hypocrisy.
You are cordially invited… Join the 9th, 12th & 14th Congressional District Republican Party organizations at the SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN SHOWDOWN IN MOTOWN: GOP Michigan Secretary of State Candidates Town Hall Forum Master of Ceremonies: Republican National Committeewoman Holly Hughes Join Republicans from across Southeast Michigan as we come together to hear from GOP candidates running for Michigan Secretary of State in 2010.
The candidates will take your questions during this live town hall panel discussion about how & who can win in 2010. Senator Cameron Brown, Senator Michelle McManus & Clerk/Register Anne Norlander will attend this complimentary event. Snacks/goodies will be provided by the Executive Committees of the 9th, 12th & 14th Congressional District Republican Party organizations. Event date: Monday, March 30th. Social hour/meet the candidates: 6:30 – 7:30 PM. Event starts at 7:30 PM. Event location: Trott Financial Center (former McCain-Palin ’08 Great Lakes Regional Headquarters), 31440 Northwestern Highway (between 13 Mile & Middlebelt Roads – east side of road), Farmington Hills. Bring your friends!
Over the last decade, General Motors has given $1.50 to Republican candidates for every $1 it has given to Democrats. That same pattern has been followed by Chrysler and Ford, which year after year have favored the right side of the aisle, sometimes by more than a 3-to-1 ratio in dollar terms.
Since 1990, the auto industry as a whole -- including suppliers, dealers and manufacturers -- has cut $100 million in checks to Republicans, compared with just $34 million to Democrats. [...]
"Carmakers have always leaned Republican," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "But it'll be interesting to see whether what happened this week changes that pattern."
Judge will hear motions in "Lose Your House, Lose Your Vote" case
By Clarence William Cromwell
We may never know exactly what transpired when a reporter from the Michigan Messenger interviewed James Carabelli, chairperson of the Macomb County Republican Party, but on Monday a federal judge will have to consider which version of the truth is more believable.
Read on to find out what we learned when we dug into this case.
With Senate Republican Floor Leader Alan Cropsey leading the Senate Obtructionists' faltering crusade to say thanks but no thanks to a bridge to somewhere, here's some "Alaska-style fiscal responsiblity" that Mike Bishop (R-Tanning Salon) can believe in.
Thaddeus McCotter threw a hissy fit because President Bush refused Republicans request to convene a special session of Congress for political grandstanding on oil drilling.
In a "legislative update sent to GOP members and staff" today, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) accused "'Beijing George' Bush of throwing House Republicans 'under the bone-dry bus' on his way to the Olympics." From the memo:
Today, in his final term, the wildly unpopular President George W. Bush boarded Air Force One bound for the Beijing Olympics and a meeting with his chum Hu Jintao, the dapper ruler of a nuclear armed, communist dictatorship. ... Perhaps our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief will bring our absent Democrat Congress some 'Made in (communist) China' souvenir t-shirts: "Bush went to Beijing and all I got was this lousy five week, paid vacation."
It seems that Thaddeus forgets that taxpayers pay for his five-week vacation, which is a far sight more generous than most of us get.
American companies are stingy on their vacation allotments - the average US worker gets just 8.1 days a year.
25 percent of Americans receive no paid vacation at all.
Can we please start electing people with maturity and manners? Men like McCotter make terrible role models.
The Washington Post mentioned Bush's visit to Michigan yesterday and quoted Mike Cox:
The only mention of Obama during the entire event came from Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who attempted a joke in which he argued that media outlets had portrayed the presumptive Democratic nominee as Jesus Christ.
"Apparently Barack Obama was born in a manger," Cox said. "...Whether there was any room at the inn, I don't know."
As a Christian, I'm offended that Mike Cox used the name of Jesus Christ to mock Obama. On the other hand, I'm not surprised. Cox (like many other Republicans) only uses religion as a tool to get votes.
House Rep Fulton Sheen said that a government shutdown was preferable to revenues, according to sub only MIRS News.
Sheen's comments came at a tax policy workshop at the Mackinac Republican gathering this weekend. Sen. Nancy Cassis and House Rep. Lorence Wenke were in attendance and did not challenge the statement.
The first thing out of his mouth was, "I can get you a new Governor."
He immediately won them over. He might as well have handed out $100 bills.
Actually, these are Republicans. It would have to be $1,000 bills. Untaxed.
He then went on to discuss the one issue where he has accidental credibility: the war on terror. He said that in order to defeat Islam terror war against God's favorite people (whatever Rudolph is calling it these days), we have to preserve the Patriot Act restrictions on American freedom, and we must embrace torture.
After getting Michigan a new Governor, the first thing he would do as President is put a new Office of Emergency Management Command Center in Baghdad. That's a perfect place for the emergency management center because it's within walking distance of ground zero photo opportunities.
Nah he didn't really say that. That's just speculation based on where he put the NYC OEM command center, after the World Trade Center was attacked. See, this guy really is the most intellectually equipped candidate to handle the war on terror.
And he assured everyone that he was the guy to beat Hillary Clinton. So how's the polling going in New York, where Clinton & Giuliani are from?
Clinton: 58%
Giuliani: 33%
Now to be fair, Giuliani predicts a Clinton-Obama ticket, and claims he can defeat Clinton-Obama because he can "make this campaign nationwide." However, going back to the polls:
In Primary Polls, Clinton leads all Democrats in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida.
The Republican Primary picture is more muddled. Romney leads in New Hampshire, Thompson leads in South Carolina, and Giuliani is on top in Florida.
That's how "nationwide" he is. He's losing to the guy from a fictional tv show that takes place in his town.
In other news at the Mackinac shindig, Republicans agree that Hillary Clinton can win the Presidency, if they don't fight hard enough against her.
The Republicans have already been beating the crap out of her for over a decade.
How do you motivate a Republican whose Congressional seat is being threatened? Well, if you're Incumbent Retention Czar Mike Rogers (MI-08), head of the NRCC's 
Cross-posted at 
My former 
