New Pew Polling Shows How Detrimental The Vote For The 2008 Wall Street Bailout Can Be For Candidates

Scores of Republican candidates are refusing to debate their opponents and refusing to even submit to interviews with legitimate journalists, sticking instead to a campaign strategy of only going on the GOP's own network, Fox, and talking only with Hate Talk Radio hosts. John Boehner, for example, has been a congressman for two decades but he has turned down every nonpartisan group and every media outlet that has offered to host a debate between himself and political newcomer Justin Coussoule. In that two decades he's accrued a record that would be easy pickings for Coussoule to tear apart and a new Pew poll makes it clear that there's one part of Boehner's record particularly that could doom his bid for reelection. The special interests lobbyist-controlled congressman not only voted for Bush's 2008 no-strings-attached Wall Street TARP bailout, he forced dozens of other Republicans to vote for it as well and engineered its passage in the House.

In the upcoming midterm elections, two factors have emerged as major potential negatives for candidates: Fully 46% say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported government loans to banks during the financial crisis two years ago, while nearly as many (42%) say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate backed by Sarah Palin.

Although Sarah Palin purports to be filled with disdain and righteous indignation for corrupt political hacks like Boehner, believe me, she isn't endorsing Justin Coussoule on her Facebook page! But do Boehner's constituents even know he led the fight for the TARP bailout? The DCCC campaigns against Boehner in every district in the country except one-- Ohio's eighth congressional district. They haven't run any ads against him and haven't helped Justin Coussoule in any way. In fact, DCCC leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz has gone out of her way to denigrate Coussoule, the way she often does when military veterans run for office on a progressive, anti-corruption platform. Without corruption, political hacks like Wasserman Schultz-- and Boehner-- would be nowhere.

The message the DCCC should be telling Ohio voters-- but won't as long as people like Wasserman Schultz are in charge is that the week after the House defeated the bailout, Boehner and his henchmen beat up on enough GOP congressmen to pass it. And on October 3, a worse, more irresponsible version did indeed pass the House. Among the Republicans currently campaigning as though they opposed it are-- aside from Boehner himself:

Roy Blunt (R-MO), running for Senate
Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)
John Boozman (R-AR), running for Senate
Ken Calvert (R-CA)
John Campbell (R-CA)
Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Charlie Dent (R-PA)
David Dreier (R-CA)
Mary Fallin (R-OK), running for governor
Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)
Wally Herger (R-CA)
Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Dan Lungren (R-CA)
Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
Pete Sessions (R-TX)
Tom Tancredo (R-CO), running for governor

With one, or possibly two exceptions, the DCCC isn't taking any of them on; each gets a free pass on the most potentially deadly issue they could face. Blue America is taking on several of them; we could very much use your help.