Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS) Is Hysterical Because Someone Accused Him Of Favoring Working Families For Once

Taylor's the one on the left; Norquist insisted he stand on the right

Few Democrats, even among the worst of the southern Blue Dogs, vote so consistently on the wrong side of the aisle as Mississippi reactionary Gene Taylor. According to ProgressivePunch only a dozen Democrats have voted more with the GOP than with their own party; Taylor's one of them. Mississippi isn't exactly friendly to progressive ideas, but Obama did worse in Taylor's congressional district (32%) than in any other district in the state, including the Mississippi district represented by neo-Confederate Republican Gregg Harper (where Obama won 38%). Taylor's voting record is similar to other far right Democrats' like Dan Boren's, Chris Carney's, Travis Childers', Joe Donnelly's, and Heath Shuler's. In other words, he's generally against everything the Republicans are against.

So it came as a horrifying shock to Taylor yesterday when Grover Norquist’s lunatic fringe anti-democratic organization, Americans for Tax Reform-- until recently a front group for Jack Abramoff's pay-for-play bribery operations-- accused Taylor of favoring working families by supporting health care reform. Taylor, who opposes reform and anything that would help struggling working families, went bonkers. No one recalls Taylor ever getting so worked up about anything as the hint that he may be doing something that benefits ordinary Americans. Maybe he thought it would adversely affect his lucrative fundraising machine.

“Americans for Tax Reform are lying sacks of scum, and anyone who knowingly repeats this false information is also a liar,” Taylor said in an unusually blistering statement for a member of Congress. 

...“I am opposed to the current health care reform bills being debated in Congress,” Taylor says on his website. “We should not create an expensive new government health program or promise new government health benefits when we have not figured out how to pay the future costs of Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and other federal health programs that were promised by previous Presidents and previous Congresses.” 

Taylor is a Blue Dog and several members of the economically conservative coalition on the Energy and Commerce Committee did sign off on a deal with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to move the health care bill out of the committee, Rabin said. But Taylor isn’t even a member of the committee, and he hasn’t changed his view of the bill.

It's great when America's enemies attack each other. Taylor has taken $265,153 in legalized bribes from the Medical-Industrial Complex and another $52,090 from the Insurance Industry. He's selling his constituents out relatively cheaply. We should get Mike Stark to ask him if he's a birther.