Here's why Mean Jean Schmidt should resign from Congress -- and no, it's not (or not JUST) because she says things that are stupid and untrue

It's one thing to say stupid things. We all do that occasionally. It's another thing to say things that aren't true, though again, we all do that occasionally. It's still a worse thing to say things you ought to know, through normal prudence and fact-checking caution, are untrue -- but this is still not unknown to most of us. It gets really, really bad when you're saying stuff that's stupid and untrue and you really ought to know that it's untrue. Even there, though, stuff happens.

However, if you find yourself doing this repeatedly, and you're not Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, if you are in fact an elected member of the United States government, and you keep doing this, well, this is close to as-bad-as-it-gets. Embarrassing, surely, Disgraceful, of course. But still not enough, really, to require your resignation.

But when you keep on telling vicious stories that turn out to be untrue, and you're always stunned to be told, and you keep on repeating the vicious lies after you know that that's what they are, well, then, I think the choice is really taken out of your hands. In all decency, you really have to resign.

We noted the other day that Ohio's Mean Jean Schmidt was one of the loudest-mouthed right-wing loons screeching about how the Chinese are drilling for oil in the Florida Straits. It was, we noted, a story that even Florida GOP Sen. Mel Martinez acknowledged simply had no basis in fact.

What was really striking, as I noted at the time, was that Mean Jean seemed shocked when the whole world came crashing down on her -- much the way she had seemed shocked the first time most of us heard of her, when she called Rep. Jack Murtha with his well-known Marine background a coward for coming out against prolonging our military misadventure in Iraq. And Mean Jean isn't like many other loud-mouthed right-wing loons, who know when to cut their losses and move on to fresh, not-yet-disproved lies. Why, it barely seems to register on Mean Jean when members of her own truth-be-damned party are bearing down on her begging her for God's sake to shut her goddamned trap.

Nope! Like as not, she keeps right on saying the stupid, vicious, known-to-be-untrue things. She seems positively indignant at the suggestion that she should stop saying them. And so it has been with this fairy tale of Chinese oil drillers drilling off the coast of Florida. And so, by God, she went on the radio with right-wing titan of truth Bill Cunningham and, sure enough, once again uncorked the discredited Chinese-drilling delusion -- as heard midway through this podcast.

At some point the whistle has to be blown, the last technical foul called, and Mean Jean has to crawl back under whatever rock she slithered out from under. Sorry, Jean, but it's time. Truth be told, isn't it already way past time?


MEANWHILE, WHERE ON EARTH IS THE DCCC?

I do want to apologize for the misimpression I passed on the other day that this time out the DCCC, after inexcusably sitting on its hands when Dr. Victoria Wulsin came so close to unseating Mean Jean in 2006, has come to its senses. The indications, as Howie reported earlier, are that the boys still don't get it.

And as Howie also reported, this flies in the face of new data from OH-02 indicating that a seismic change in voter registration has occurred, and that Dems now actually outnumber Repugs in this once-blood-red district. It is, in other words, a CD that's ripe for the picking. All the elements are in place, including an outstanding candidate.

It's enough to make a person wonder about the House Democratic leadership. Can it be that what we at DWT and Blue America mean by a "better" Democrat is something the leadership wants not more but less of? Vic Wulsin is certainly no Heath Shuler or Tim Mahoney or Chris Carney, and maybe that's the problem. The DCCC didn't see the squeeze coming in this district, and therefore didn't seize the opportunity to shove a closet Republican like Shuler or Mahoney down local Dems' throats.

For nearly two years now Speaker Pelosi and her apologists have explained the House Dems' failure to do anything about the Iraq war, or to oppose the Bush regime on a whole array of issues (now, shamefully, including a constitutionally appropriate replacement for the expired FISA law), by lamenting time after time that "she just doesn't have the votes." Is it possible that in reality the House Dem brain trust would rather hold onto that excuse? That in fact they would rather have Mean Jean keep her seat than have her replaced by a progressive, independent-minded, non-corporatist Democrat?

As I say, it makes a person wonder.

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UPDATE: OR... HOWIE'S TWO CENTS... ASKING FOR YOURS

If ever a candidate deserves our help it is Vic Wulsin. The DCCC apparently doesn't see what they're missing but... well, they sure didn't with Donna Edwards either. Funny, at one time they weren't so hop on a young state legislator from Maryland named Chris Van Hollen either. Power corrupts so damn badly. Please consider donating what you can afford to Vic's campaign. I just had a message from a progressive political operative who is not enamoured on the DCCC. I'll leave his name out of this but I will say that I've known him for several years and that he is completely trustworthy and well-informed. Here's what he wrote to me: "Your good buddy John Lapp was the general consultant for Vic Wulsin's primary opponent this year. It's a strange coincidence? That guy was crushed, but I bet if Lapp's DINO candidate won he would have been R2B in a heartbeat. Not sure if Lapp is pulling the strings but he could have sway as he supposedly 'knows the area' as he was the campaign manager for right-wing Dem Ken Lucas accross the Ohio River in his first race for Congress and he is a spiteful mofo IMO."