Will Voters Bail Out Republicans Like John Boehner, Paul Ryan & John Campbell Who Engineered The Wall Street Bailout & Are Fighting Against Reform?

On September 29, 2008, the Bush economic team acted as though it was hysterical about the banking system melting down. The House had just defeated H.R.3997, a vehicle for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Wall Street bank bailout, and the Bush team demanded Congress change its mind or the financial system would collapse. It had failed 205-228, although Republican House Leader John Boehner managed to drag himself off the golf course to vote for it, as did GOP heavyweights Spencer Bachus (R-AL, top Republican on the Financial Services Committee), Paul Ryan (R-WI, top Republican on the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee), Eric Cantor (R-VA, number-two Republican in the House) Roy Blunt (R-MO, ex-number-two Republican in the House), Pete Sessions (R-TX, head of the NRCC), Jerry Lewis (R-CA, top Republican on the Appropriations Committee), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), and David Dreier (R-CA, top Republican on the Rules Committee).

Among the Republicans who voted for the bailout (either on September 20 or October 3 or on both days) and have been financed politically by the Wall Street bankers and are now running for higher office are Mike Castle (who wants to be a Delaware senator), John Boozman (who wants to be an Arkansas senator), Mark Kirk (who wants to be an Illinois senator), Adam Putnam (who wants to be the Florida Agriculture Commissioner, a step toward the governor's mansion), Roy Blunt (who wants to be a Missouri senator), Pete Hoekstra (who wants to be governor of Michigan), Mary Fallin (who wants to be governor of Oklahoma), Zach Zamp (who wants to be governor of Tennessee), and Gresham Barrett (who wants to be governor of South Carolina). Ryan, of course, is being touted by his powerful financial backers as a presidential or vice presidential contender, something daily being pushed out by the right-wing media. In all, 65 Republicans voted yes.

But then Bush's team, along with Boehner, Ryan and Cantor, got busy twisting arms and threatening and bribing members over the weekend. The "conservative" experts on Bush's team, threatening doom and gloom, finally got the horrible bailout they were demanding, more than two dozen Republicans changing their votes from nay to aye. Over the course of the last year I've been speaking with a top Republican staffer for one of the members who switched votes. Insisting on anonymity for his boss's sake, he told me that the member was brutally double-teamed by Boehner and Ryan and forced to switch votes under all kinds of threats. My source said:

If anyone thought this kind of thuggish behavior had ended with Tom DeLay leaving Congress, they got a rude awakening. Bush seemed very detached from the whole thing, like he didn't understand what was happening and couldn't have cared less. But Boehner and Ryan were real assholes and just wouldn't let up. Boehner told [the member] that changing the vote wasn't going to hurt, and that not changing the vote was going to hurt really badly. We took it as a direct threat. Ryan was even more of a nasty prick, and we could practically see the Wall Street money hanging out of his pockets.

Today the tables may have turned on Boehner, and perhaps his votes for the bailout and his arm-twisting on its behalf will hurt John Boehner, just the way it has hurt thousands of families across Ohio and across America. For the first time since being elected in 1990-- in a special primary election against a Republican child molester-- Boehner is facing a serious challenge. He has not only GOP primary opponents (two) and general election Tea Party opponents (two again), but also a focused and energetic Democratic candidate, Justin Coussoule.

Justin is offering Ohio voters a real choice for a change, and if the mood in the country really is as anti-incumbent as we're being told, no one is as vulnerable as Boehner. This morning we contacted Justin, and he told us:

Boehner's arm-twisting mechanics over the bailout bill were nothing new. It was reminiscent of the day he passed out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the floor of the House minutes before a key vote on a tobacco subsidy.  What is most outrageous about Boehner's behavior over the bailout, though, is that he is now arm-twisting again in an attempt to block any effort at reregulation of the very banks he fought so hard to bail out.  Just this weekend he managed to harass Senate Republicans in an effort to stop any bipartisan deal on badly needed reform.  I'm running hard against Boehner to give voters here a real choice and an opportunity to reject this checkbook representation in which Boehner only serves the interests with the biggest checkbooks.

Today at least a dozen Republican members of Congress are fighting for political survival because they voted with Wall Street and against their constituents. Most likely to lose their seats are Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), John Campbell (R-CA), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Bob Inglis (R-SC), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Mark Souder (R-IN), Lee Terry (R-NE) and Frank Wolf (R-VA).

This morning we spoke with Irvine city councilmember and two-time mayor Beth Krom, the popular Democratic candidate running for the Orange County seat occupied by Campbell. She was very much aware of Campbell's two votes in favor of Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout. She told us:

When John Campbell supported the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street in October 2008, he put a post on his website that asserted that the bill was "basically a cost-free plan to stabilize financial markets and save every American’s savings and investments, not a bailout." He also suggested, "This bill may wind up costing less than one year’s worth of earmarks."

True to form, his enthusiasm for bailing out the banks may have been more about self-interest than the public interest. Not only was he worried about his own hefty portfolio of personal investments, he had a debt to pay to all the financial folks who have bankrolled his campaigns with hundreds of thousands of dollars in PAC contributions.

So while Campbell-- who regards every appropriation as an earmark-- refuses to bring tax dollars back to the communities he represents, he has no problem recycling them into his own investment accounts and campaign coffers.