Why Is Patrick Murphy Backing Corrupt Conservative Joe Garcia's Bid To Get Back Into Congress?

In contested primaries, the DCCC almost never gets it right. They pretty much always back the more conservative candidate over the more progressive candidate-- and they don't care what the local Democratic Party wants, as we saw in California and Florida in recent weeks.

But there is one race-- in Miami-- where they stumbled into the best choice. Annette Taddeo is running against Republican incumbent, shady lobbyist Carlos Curbelo, and the DCCC has actually been helpful and supportive and has endorsed her. But now the corrupt conservative who Curbelo beat in 2014, New Dem Joe Garcia, has launched a primary challenge to Annette. Appropriately enough, his kickoff event is at the DC offices of professional event planners, Erickson and Company in DC. Hosts include many of the corrupt conservatives who joined Garcia in opposing much of the progressive agenda Obama tried to pass while Garcia was in Congress, primarily sleazy New Dems like Ami Bera (CA), Scott Peters (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Jim Costa (CA), and, of course, a couple of the so-called "former" Republican New Dems, Filemon Vela (TX) and, worst of all, Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy (FL).

Murphy and Garcia were consistently holding hands and skipping across the aisle together to vote with their Republican pals against Wall Street reform. But voting for the GOP's war against the modest reforms in Dodd-Frank were far from the only instances where crooks like Garcia and Murphy saw opportunities to please rich campaign contributors by voting against Democratic priorities and Democratic values. Like Murphy, once Garcia got into Congress, he abandoned any pretense of progressive politics, joined the Wall Street-owned New Dems and started voting consistently with the worst, most right-wing elements of the Democratic Party. And like Patrick Murphy, he voted again and again and again for the Keystone XL Pipeline and worked with conservaDems (again, like Murphy) and the GOP to delay and sabotage the Affordable Care Act. He was quickly a total disappointment to his supporters and soon got involved with a series of his own ugly scandals and in 2014, the FL-26 voters dumped him unceremoniously for Curbelo. Garcia and Murphy support warrantless spying on American citizens and opposed the Amash amendment to prevent that. Garcia's horrible voting record and scandals depressed Democratic turnout and although he outspent Curbelo gigantically-- $3,787,930 to $2,347,633-- of his 135,694 voters from 2012, only 78,306 bothered to come vote for him in 2014, allowing Curbelo to beat him 51 to 49% in an even bluer district than it had been 2 years earlier.

He was a thorn in President Obama's side, whining about the thaw in Cuban-American relations and working with Republicans to undercut his agenda. When we named him one of the 10 worst freshmen in 2013-- along with Murphy-- we noted their votes with the GOP to freeze the pay for federal employees, a vote to soften the blow of the sequester for the Pentagon while leaving all the other victims in the lurch, a GOP initiative to prevent the federal government from giving states greater flexibility when complying with a welfare program’s work requirements, a vote against the Senate budget bill, a vote for CISPA, a domestic spying bill, a vote to cut food stamps drastically, and a vote for HR 1613 , a bill written by Oil lobbyists that amounted to big giveaways for offshore drilling businesses.

Does that explain the legislative love affair between two of Congress' worst fake-Democrats? Today Garcia is not in Congress, so he was unable to join Murphy is betraying Democrats again last week when he ignored public health groups and stood by insane House Republicans Friday in voting for the sardonically-named Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act, which passed with votes from 33 Democrats and all but one Republican. Murphy's opponent in the Florida Senate primary, Alan Grayson joined First Lady Michelle Obama in opposing this corporate conservative-led effort to weaken menu-labeling rules designed to promote healthy eating habits, help fight obesity, and ultimately, contain medical costs. Grayson: "Busy families eat out more than ever, yet Patrick Murphy just made it harder for all of us to make informed choices about the food our families put in their bodies. As your Senator, I would never ignore public health experts just to cynically curry favor with the special interests that pushed this Know-Nothing bill."