How Will New Hampshire React To Charlie Bass' Vote To Gut Medicare?

DWT readers are not unacquainted with slippery New Hampshire congresscritter Charlie Bass. We first started covering his slimy roll in politics back in 2006, 7 months before the voters decided to retire him. That November, the people of New Hampshire's 2nd CD gave the incumbent rubber stamp Republican 93,905 votes, 45%. Last year, in the Republican wave election, Bass was back as the GOP tidal wave engulfed New Hampshire. He got 48% of the votes, beating grassroots progressive Annie Kuster by around 3,000 votes in one of the closest elections in the country. Today New Hampshire seems to regret what happened, not just in the 2nd CD, but everywhere across the state. We saw a few weeks ago how a once-safe GOP legislative seat was swamped by a Democrat in a special election. Yesterday two top GOP state legislators resigned from the party leadership in protest against the Republicans' war against working families. "It is evident now that pro-worker Republican views like mine are not respected under this leadership team,” said House Deputy Majority Leader Matt Quandt (R-Exeter), one of the two who resigned. House Whip Tim Copeland (R-Stratham), a freshman legislator and retired state worker, gave his resignation this week and said he has become frustrated with the attacks against public employees. "I just couldn't do it anymore. Delivering their message goes against my grain, so I did the right thing and resigned," he said. "What they're doing, going after the public employees and pensions just isn't right."

Paul Ryan hasn't been campaigning in New Hampshire, but his budget-- or, as he terms it his "cause"-- is very much in the minds of voters there. The new ad (above), plus Annie Kuster's decision to seek a rematch, will keep voters thinking about whether or not they want to wreck the social compact and follow Ryan and Bass down the rabbit hole of right-wing social nihilism, gutting Medicare, abolishing Medicaid, privatizing Social Security, enshrining the anti-Christian Law of the Jungle mentality that thrilled Ryan in Ayn Rand's adolescent novels.

Special interest money will once again act as a bulwark to shore up Charlie Bass' pro-Big Business, anti-family career. The main thing on voters' minds is probably Bass' vote against Medicare-- twice. His tendency to be a shameless rubberstamp for his party-- and a lackey for Wall Street-- got him in trouble with the voters before and is likely to do so again next year. Last year the Kuster campaign pointed out that "Bass supported subsidies for oil companies and bailouts for big Wall Street executives-- now those same interests are subsidizing his campaign and bailing-out" his campaign. The Koch Brothers, in appreciation of Bass' support for their efforts to ship American jobs to China, bought him another shot in Congress. Bass' "support for tax breaks for big oil and tax loopholes for companies that outsource jobs matches the agenda of these shady, outside groups," pointed out the Kuster campaign at the time. "Charlie's outsourcing friends are understandably concerned about Annie Kuster's plan to close the tax loopholes he supported during his twelve years in Washington."

Blue Hampshire thoroughly laid out all the facts on Bass' disgraceful relationship with Big Oil which has given him, over the course of his disgraceful career, more thinly veiled bribes from the oil & gas industry than all of the other 22 members of U.S. House of Representatives from New England combined. In return, Bass has consistently voted against cracking down on price gouging by Big Oil and against removing billions in tax breaks to Big Oil from legislation. In fact when he was in Congress the first time, and part of the reason New Hampshire voters tossed him, he voted for Cheney's 2005 Energy Bill which featured a $1.6 billion tax breaks for Big Oil and Gas. This year he once again voted for tax breaks for Big Oil and against closing the loopholes the GOP thinks they deserve.

That, his vote to turn Medicare into an inadequate voucher program and an assertive, progressive Kuster campaign, should stop Bass once and for all. If you'd like to help, you can do it at our Act Blue page.