I am going to do a series of posts on this subject as there is a lot of ground to cover. I am going to quote Jessica Arons of The Center for American Progress first to just give you a taste of how far reaching and dangerous this bill is. Then we need to go back over history to see how we got to these terrible straits.
The number of HR #3 tells you a lot. This bill is very important to the Republican majority in the House, the Republican party. This bill unites all the elements of the right. There is no squabbling amongst them all on how important it is to restrict the rights of women to make decisions about their lives so they can be free and equal participants in our democracy. On that they all are singing on key.
What's more, H.R. 3 would redefine the concept of government funding far beyond the current common understanding. It does not simply prohibit the use of federal funds to directly pay for abortion. Instead, it would insert itself into every crevice of government activity and prohibit even private and nonfederal government funds from being spent on any activity related to the provision of abortion any time federal money is involved in funding or subsidizing other, nonabortion-related activities.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking would prohibit roads built with federal funds from passing by abortion clinics, drugs developed by the National Institutes of Health or approved by the Food and Drug Administration from being used at abortion clinics, or medical students with government loans from receiving abortion training-all because such uses could be viewed as "subsidizing" abortion with federal dollars.
Taken to its logical conclusion and of course, restraint is not what the radical right is noted for this bill theory could affect a large swathe of what we have always considered here in America to be private actions and private decisions.
They are not just doing this bill for show or to make a point. They will do what they need to do to make this bill pass. The House has a large Republican majority. Everyone one of them will vote for the bill, plus there are 10 anti choice Democratic sponsors. I have long said they will blitzkrieg this bill through the House. Then they will look for ways to scale the walls of the Democratically controlled Senate. Just like yesterday Mitch McConnell attached the repeal of the Affordable Care Act to the FAA authorization bill, there are many, many ways to bring this bill to the floor, even if the the Majority Leader would not on his own bring the bill to the floor.
In any wave election, a few long-shot candidates take seats who according to conventional wisdom really 'shouldn't.' In 2006, it was Nancy Boyda and Carol Shea Porter who snuck in; neither woman was endorsed by EMILY's List and both shocked the DC establishment by running effective grassroots campaigns and unseating popular incumbents in a wave year. This cycle, there are a number of other possibilities for this kind of candidate.
Becky Greenwald in Iowa is one, Steve O'Donnell in
PA-18 is another, Debbie Cook in California is another and Josh Zeitz in New Jersey is a fourth. Most longshots have a name ID problem, and one way to raise your name ID is by baiting your better known opponent to attack you and 'punch down'. There are other possibilities, such as running a great volunteer operation or a creative set of ads, but getting attacked is a sign that a low budget campaign is working.
Right now, Josh Zeitz is getting attacked by Chris Smith on radio and over the mail, and Smith hasn't acknowledged an opponent by name in 20 years. Steve O'Donnell got a semi-endorsement of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the paper owned by neo-confederate icon Richard Mellon Scaife, and his opponent, Tim Murphy is going hard negative with character attacks. Debbie Cook continues to close in the polls, and former Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey endorsed her.
I'm so fucking mad about the Seattle Times hit piece on Darcy so I can't really do this justice, but we've added a bunch of Better Democrats to our page. Josh Zeitz, Josh Segall, Al Franken, Alice Kryzan, Gary Peters, and Equality for All are on there. It's a mix of longshots who can win in wave and bring us a progressive House and 60 votes in the Senate, progressives in tight contests, and fights we need to fight.
Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican who has represented central New Jersey since 1980, probably didn't realize he was walking into a political minefield when his family requested a break on his daughter's huge college bill.
Smith's daughter, who until recently lived with him in the family's Herndon, Va., home, obtained in-state tuition privileges at a prestigious Virginia university - saving the Smiths $20,000 per year off the $29,000 tuition charged to out-of-state students.
Smith's campaign is trying to explain this by claiming that his wife is domiciled in Virginia, not him. Unfortunately, his wife voted in New Jersey and ran as a McCain delegate in New Jersey. In other words, this New Jersey Congressman is reaping an illegal savings of $80,000 from Virginia.
The Republican Party is basically an amoral criminal conspiracy. Republican leaders really just don't care about law or property when it gets in the way of something they want. I keep coming back to Democrat Josh Zeitz, the progressive running in this district. The race is just such a great example of how politics works, from the cobweb-like Democratic infrastructure to the banal racism and criminality of the Republican incumbent structure.
The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed New Jersey Republican Chris Smith.
In New Jersey's Fourth District, which spans from northern Burlington County and Trenton to the Shore, incumbent Republican CHRIS SMITH of Hamilton has our support over the Democratic challenger, Bordentown historian Josh Zeitz.
While we disagree with Smith's views on some social issues, he has taken principled stands for human rights.
I emailed with progressive Democrat Josh Zeitz, and he told me that "the Philadelphia Inquirer never covered my race once. Never interviewed me. Never sent a candidate questionnaire. Never responded to any of dozens of press releases. Purports to oppose the Bush tax cuts, the war, the bankrupcy bill, homophobia, and the Christian Right. But endorsed Chris Smith. This is the state of journalism today. They endorsed someone without even interviewing by paper or in person his opponent."
Incidentally, Chris Smith is a radical homophobe and a segregationist, voting "to support segregation by allowing all-white private schools (which were created after forced-desegregation) to remain segregated." He's not just a guy who disagrees on some social issues.
Smith is also endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters. Wheee!
Back in August, I wrote a piece on the NEA and various labor unions backing a reactionary Republican in New Jersey against progressive Josh Zeitz in NJ-04 (a winnable district).
Now Zeitz has made a video explaining the issue in his own words. It's quite rare to have a candidate so openly discuss these kinds of political problems.
In politics, if you want to see how old progressives (or really anyone) prioritize, check out what they do when no one's looking. For instance, Chris Smith, a Republican in New Jersey who is the Chair of the Pro-life Caucus in the House, has received money and/or endorsements from the NEA, AFSCME, Teamsters, CWA, IBEW, AFL-CIO, and the League of Conservation Voters. As an example of how the old progressive leadership class preserves the status quo, this is an excellent example, because an endorsement of Smith is a betrayal of the members of these organizations by their leadership.
Though Smith is a good vote on the Employee Free Choice Act and the minimum wage, Smith is, to put it bluntly, a perverted and homophobic mysogenist (and not particularly well-known or well-liked in his district). It's not just the standard conservative stuff, like voting to authorize and fund the Iraq war or the Bankruptcy Bill or FISA. It's more than that, like voting to require underage rape victims to secure the consent of their rapists before terminating the resulting pregnancy, or voting on twenty-two separate occasions criminalize the birth control pill. He also associates quite freely with various viciously homophobic groups, and is well-known as one of the fiercest opponent of abortion in Congress.
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