No, Alan Grayson Is NOT Just Like Allen West

I think it was Saturday-- days are blurring together again-- but I passed a TV that had MSNBC on. It must have been the Inside-the-Beltway Convention Wisdom For Morons Show, which is in really heavy rotation lately, and they had a couple of the worst pundit-hacks in the pundit-hack business on as guests, spouting their gibberish. I think one was Dave Wasserman, and he is the Cook Report's most outspokenly foolish bobblehead-- at least on Twitter-- and the other was a woman whose name I didn't catch (maybe Jennifer). I was just putting on my shoes and socks so I wasn't paying close attention to all the conventional nonsense they were spouting. But then the one I think was Wasserman started babbling about how crazy Florida is because they elect extremists like Allen West and Alan Grayson. I'm mature enough to have learned to not throw shoes at TV screens-- although (fair warning) I do yell out loudly at lectures and even at movies.

First, as I'm sure even the bobbleheaded Wasserman is aware, no one who voted for Alan Grayson, in the center of the state in and around Orlando, could have possibly voted for Allen West on the southwest coast of the state has. So you can't blame "Florida." It's not like a senator or governor where the whole state is responsible. I'm giving Wasserman the benefit of the doubt on that one and assuming he was just trying to be an asshole. He succeeded. Alan Grayson is nothing like Allen West except in the fevered minds of Beltway pundits like Wasserman and the Villagers of his tribe. Allen West is a Tea party opportunist and a war criminal with no accomplishments to his name, not before Congress or since getting into Congress as part of the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010. (Off topic: Wasserman, who I assume from his tweets is the resident right-wing lunatic fringe idiot at the operation, referred to the Blue Dogs yesterday as a "coalition of center-left and center-right Democrats." No mention of far right-wing Democrats who almost always vote with Boehner and Cantor on crucial rollcalls.)

Grayson, a smart, savvy Bronx guy, worked his way through Harvard as a janitor and graduated summa cum laude in three years with a degree in economics. A few years later he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law. He also got a masters in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He clerked for both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia and taught law at George Washington University. He is the only lawyer who was successful in suing any of the Bush Regime corporate cronies-- or anyone else-- for war profiteering in Iraq. That's how he got famous. Allen West got famous for torturing civilians in Iraq and then being drummed out of the military. There is no difference between him and Alan Grayson in Dave Wasserman's sad and ugly little Beltway world.

There is in Jim Hightower's world-- and he was in Orlando last week campaigning for Grayson. The video below was recorded by Hightower. Enjoy it; it isn't something that would make any sense to someone like Dave Wasserman, none at all. And tomorrow celebrate that no one outside of the Beltway cares what Dave Wasserman and people like him have to say. In the last poll Grayson released, he was up 15 points over an opponent very much like Allen West. And then I saw a Republican poll a few days later that showed Grayson up 18 points. Maybe that's because he fights-- effectively and hard and without DC sleaze tactics-- for ordinary working families. Hightower:

An old time humorist once said that, “Every now and then, an innocent man gets sent to the legislature.” Well, Alan Grayson is innocent of the corporate money and the caving in to corporate interests that so many practice in Washington.

But he is not innocent in terms of knowing how to get things done, for ordinary people. In fact, he drives those right-wingers and the corporate lobbyists crazy. Of course, that’s a pretty short ride for most of them.

There’s a motel here in my town of Austin, Texas. It has a great iconic marquee in front of it. It says, “No additives, no preservatives, corporate-free since 1938.” That is Alan Grayson; that is our guy; corporate free. He is a leader who actually leads. Imagine that. And he will make every Democrat in Congress better just by his presence there, and by his fighting spirit. So that will add up to making America a better place to be. That’s why I am backing Alan Grayson.

Did you vote yet? The polls are still open in Florida.

UPDATE: Grayson won... by a lot

Grayson's race was one of the first to be called by AP. He beat his silly, hapless opponent, Todd Long 155,072 (62.2%) to 94,161 (37.8%), so by a much bigger margin than any of the polls had predicted. And Allen West lost, albeit narrowly, to a fake Democrat backed by the DCCC.