Right-wingers Vow Revenge Against Mary Bono Mack AND Her Husband

I never thought I'd step up to defend Mary Bono Mack, a very mediocre absentee representative from California's High Desert (Riverside County)-- and don't worry, I won't. She inherited her increasingly blue congressional district based in Palm Springs from her then-husband Sonny Bono after his fatal skiing accident. Since then she's married one of the most far right extremists in Congress-- a lunatic fringe kook named Connie Mack IV from Florida-- while managing to stay in office by voting 2 or 3 times a year with the Democrats, especially on gay issues, not because her marriage to Connie is a lesbian match but because Palm Springs is almost as gay as San Francisco, NYC, Miami Beach or West Hollywood. In a district that embraced Obama, Progressive Punch shows her lifetime voting record on crucial, substantive issues to be more mainstream conservative than radical right, but by no means moderate.

There are 33 Republicans-- including dependable rightists like Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Jimmy Duncan (R-TN), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Ed Royce (R-CA), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and even full-fledged-no-foolin'-around fascist stooge Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL)-- who vote more frequently across the aisle than Bono-Mack. When it comes to economic issues facing ordinary American families-- like fair taxation, labor rights, equal justice, and corporate subsidies-- you'd have to search pretty hard to find many Republicans in Congress more reactionary and anti-family than Bono-Mack.

So it was probably a bit of a shock to her when she saw the headline above that I captured in a screen shot from the Republican Party blog, Red State: Mary Bono Mack Should Be Burned In Effigy And Voted out Of Office. It was written by Georgia Republican Party operative Erick Erickson and something tells me Erickson isn't about to endorse Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet, who's not just gay, but married (to another man) and happily raising their two children! Too far a stretch for Republicans who seem to always be involved with "opposite marriages," or whatever they call the degrading situations traditional marriage sanctity defenders like Mark Sanford, David Diapers Vitter, Larry Craig and John Ensign are in.

Erickson and the fringe loons on the furthest reaches of the non-criminal right are so upset with Bono Mack that they are threatening to not just defeat her but to go after the right-wing extremist husband to boot! He demands that she vote against health care reform and against the energy bill when it comes back from the Senate-- where it will probably be watered down and look more acceptable to mainstream conservatives!!!-- or face the consequences.

Otherwise, we beat her and her husband at the polls.

Yes, you heard me. We can get at Mary Bono Mack in two ways-- her district and that of her husband. He should feel the heat just as much as her.

I bet they're trembling in their boots.