If Florida Voters Want Another Senator Like Marco Rubio They Can Elect David Jolly Or Patrick Murphy

It must be frustrating for Alan Grayson, in his run for the open Florida Senate seat that Rubio is giving up-- see the clip of Grayson above explaining Rubio's dreadful Senate record to Chris Hayes-- to have Wall Street's Senator, Chuck Schumer, pushing Wall Street's favorite candidate in the primary, "former" Republican Patrick Murphy. Murphy may be a dullard-- he was recently named among the least effect members the House-- but Schumer is as shrewd and manipulative as he is loaded down with bankster cash. Between his bro-mance with Schumer and his deep family roots in the GOP, Murphy knows how to blatantly lie to voters.

Like Rubio, Murphy is also lazy and doesn't like doing any work. His biggest campaign contributors are from the Finance Sector (who gave him an astronomical and unprecedented $2,260,848 in just 3 years). Rubio has been out cozying up to big donors instead of doing any work in the Senate-- and work in Congress means working on committees. Ironically, last week, Murphy played hooky from the House Financial Services Committee, the committee where he regularly serves Wall Street interests and kicks his Florida middle class constituents to the curb, but when it came to 13 important votes last Wednesday, he disappeared. The markups were so important that they started Tuesday and went into Wednesday but it looked like Patrick, like Rubio, was out kissing up to potential contributors instead of doing the work Florida taxpayers pay him to do. I called and e-mailed Murphy's office to ask why he missed those 13 votes and, of course, couldn't get an answer.

Another Democrat on the committee told me, in confidence, that whether or not Murphy was at a fundraiser, he probably didn't want to vote because his normal routine of voting with the Republicans for the Wall Street agenda-- while very remunerative-- could cause him problems with Florida voters. And, it's true, I've noticed that since he got into a primary fight with Grayson, his normally Republican voting record has turned slightly more Democratic. I guess Schumer told him to play up to Democrats for a little while.

This morning I got a fundraising e-mail from his campaign making ridiculous claims in the vein of having "championed the middle class and fought to expand Medicare, strengthen Social Security, defend women’s rights, and protect the environment against climate change." Much of that is just flat out false. He didn't just vote against the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus budgets that do attempt to expand Medicare and strengthen Social Security, he even voted against the official Democratic Party budget, which attempts to fight back against GOP attempts to weaken Social Security and Medicare! 31 right-wing Blue Dogs and New Dems voted against the official Democrat budget with Murphy and 10 of them were defeated or forced from office in the next election. Instead, Murphy thinks he should be promoted!

And as for Murphy's absurd claim to be protecting the environment, not only did he vote 6 times for the Keystone XL Pipeline-- including for a far right-wing scheme to remove President Obama from decision-making capacity (one of the only Democrats to go so extreme)-- he was also one of the only Democrats to join his Republican polluter buddies in favor of drilling off Florida's coast! No wonder he refuses to debate, Grayson-- he's petrified of being called out on his unending liars about his record.

In the end the pathetic Republican shill for Wall Street was reduced in his fundraising e-mail to whining that he’s "a Floridian, through and through, born and raised in Florida," referring to Grayson having not been born in Florida. OK, Patrick isn't lying about that so kudos to Patrick. Only problem is that almost 2/3s of Floridians weren't born in the state but moved there because they preferred living there. Does Murphy think that 64% of the people who live in his state are somehow not as good as he is?

He also claimed he's the "most electable," meaning he can get Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to vote for him. That's an interesting argument but it doesn't hold any water. The Republicans are likely to nominate a David Jolly, who is only slightly less conservative than Murphy is-- so it will be a turn-off/lesser-of-two-evils election for Democrats, many of whom just won't vote, while conservatives will look at the two candidates and pick the actual Republican instead of the former Republican who they are likely to figure out is a transactional opportunist-- and completely beholden to the hated Chuck Schumer.

UPDATE: And Speaking Of Jolly, Since It's Veteran's Day

I don't know how many insipid congressional e-mails I got today from members who never served babbling on about their well wishes for those who did. Alan Grayson sent a very different kind of Veteran's Day e-mail, some of which I've relocated below:

My GOP opponent David Jolly has a plan to gut the Veterans Administration, but he doesn’t want you to know it. And he sure doesn’t want me to tell you about it.

In July, Jolly introduced H.R. 3183, which privatizes the Veterans Administration’s healthcare system, forcing taxpayers to pay for healthcare outside that system. As is the Tea Party custom these days, Jolly gave it the Orwellian title of the "Veterans Healthcare Freedom Act." (If he introduced a bill that would triple homelessness, Jolly would call it the "Freedom to Sleep Under a Bridge Act.")

Jolly couldn’t get anyone in Florida to report on it, but he did get the right-wing Boston Herald, formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch, to do some stenography on it. Then he got an invitation to the Boston Herald’s radio show. He talked extensively about his privatization bill, extolling the bill’s "Freedom Card," which (judging from Jolly’s description) would magically transform veteran care into medical paradise. Then this Q&A transpired:

Boston Herald: "[Instead of privatization,] some people would like to see the VA just dismantled on federal level, and just provided in the 50 states. So every state where a soldier comes from, that’s where he goes or she goes, to get their healthcare. They feel like it’s just more manageable, you know, to do it in a more smaller [sic] scale. . . . Could that be another solution to fixing the VA, basically dismantling it on the federal level, and bringing it back to the state level?"

David Jolly: "You know, it may be, because government never gets into services and reduces cost and reduces size. It always increases costs and increases inefficiency."

So Jolly wants to dismantle the VA, but he’s agnostic about how to do it: (1) privatize; or (2) devolve to the states.

I called out Jolly on that, because dismantling the VA would be a disaster for veterans. That’s why thousands of us signed our petition to tell Jolly that we won’t allow him to gut veterans benefits. (Jolly’s BFF, my Democratic Primary opponent Patrick Murphy, was silent.) Here is Jolly’s utterly evasive response:

"An attack by Alan Grayson is a badge of honor for a conservative." And: "I won’t dignify his particular charges with a response." And I’m "unreasonable."

We’re seeing a lot of this strategy from GOP candidates this year: deny, decry, and lie.

If it’s "unreasonable" to stand up to vicious Republican attempts to gut veterans benefits, then I guess I am guilty as charged. Because our troops deserve first-class care, both in the field of battle, and then at home-- we promised it to them, and they’ve earned it. No one has the right to try to take that away, even David "I Know All About Veterans Because I Once Worked For One" Jolly. You tell me if that’s unreasonable.

You can help keep unreasonable conservatives like Patrick Murphy and David Jolly out of the Senate by helping elect an unflinching progressive-- Alan Grayson, here.