HAROLD MEYERSON BEATS UP ON CHAFEE AS A FAKE MODERATE. OK, BUT WHAT ABOUT SUE KELLY, MARY BONO, NANCY JOHNSON, SHAYS, GERLACH, BASS, FITZPATRICK...

Yesterday I was interviewing David Roth, the progressive Democrat running for Congress against the rubber stamp robot who used to be married to Sonny from Sony and Cher. But Mary's not Cher; she's just some Republican hack who takes a lot of money from Big Business and votes for their agenda. Her voting record isn't as overtly bigoted and hateful as Mean Jean Schmidt's or Roy Blunt's but, substantively, it's not that far from theirs. She may have a less reactionary voting record than the other Republican members of the California delegation but the DMI has analyzed her voting record for impact on middle class families and she gets the same big fat zero (and an "F" grade) as the most fascist-minded right wing jerks like Gary Miller, Dirty Dick Pombo, Jerry Lewis, Buck McKeon, and the rest of the extreme right wing California Republican caucus. Her fake reputation for being moderate is absurd. Her abysmal voting record speaks for itself.

Roth explained that when the extremist leadership needs her, she's always there for them, no matter how badly it hurts her constituents. I mean you might think that someone who has the numbers of elderly retired people in her Palm Springs district might think twice about shoving the doughnut hole down their throats. Or you might think a district where everyone drives long distances might be somewhat reluctant to gorge herself on Big Oil legalized bribes and then blatantly do their bidding. But if you did think that way, you would be naive. And I just picked Mary Bono because I happened to be talking to her opponent last night.

I could easily have picked any of a few dozen petrified Republican incumbents who are desperately trying to distance themselves from Bush and the extremist Republican leadership-- which they all voted for-- in the Congress. Many of our Blue America challengers are running against out-and-out proud-to-have-my-head-up-Bush's-ass neo-fascist lemmings. Victoria Wulsin will never have to worry about Mean Jean Schmidt trying to pass herself off as a moderate. Angie Paccione is never going to have to worry about Marilyn Musgrave denouncing the support she receives from the KKK and neo-Nazi groups. Robert Rodriguez, Jerry McNerney, Larry Kissell are running against Buck McKeon, Dirty Dick Pombo, Coleen Rowley and Robin Hayes, 4 Republicans with voting records so extreme and fanatic that the word "moderate" could only be used as the punch-line of a joke. But some of our candidates, like David Roth, Lois Murphy, Chris Murphy, Steven Porter, and John Hall, are running against duplicitous Republican incumbents who are always there for the right-wing GOP leadership but go out of their way to vote against them when it doesn't matter-- just so they can run to the voters and say "See, I'm a moderate; I really am!" They're really not.

Today's Washington Post has a column by Harold Meyerson taking apart the whole fake moderate meme in regard to Rhode Island's on-the-ropes Republican incumbent Lincoln Chafee. There are few states as solidly blue as Rhode Island. Why should they re-elect a U.S. Senator who consistently votes to ensure extreme right wing domination of the country by supporting contemptible and odious leaders like Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum?

Chafee and Maine's Olympia Snowe and such deathbed converts to moderation as Ohio's Mike DeWine are seeking reelection to the Senate by claiming that they represent a Republicanism less rabid than the Bush-Rove strain. They point to individual votes in which they broke with the president and flouted the party line. But those votes have been negated a hundred times over by their votes to make Bill Frist the majority leader, just as they would be negated when the new Senate takes office in 2007 if the moderates backed any Republican unwilling to make a fundamental break with Bush and Bushism.

The issue isn't the individual voting records of Frist and McConnell, which are indistinguishable from each other and define the mainstream of today's gorge-the-rich, drown-the-poor, stay-the-course Republicanism. The issue is that under the control of the Republicans, both the Senate and the House have abandoned their constitutionally mandated obligation to oversee executive branch endeavors, most especially endeavors gone as awry as the war in Iraq. The issue is that under Republican control, both houses have abandoned any effort to address America's real problems.