On Wednesday evening President Bush will be holding a fundraiser in Charleston for one of his most loyal water-carriers and rabidly pro-war members of the corrupt leadership of the House: Rep Shelley Moore Capito.
Anti-war organizations have organized a protest rally and beans-and-cornbread dinner to coinicide with the President. The Po Folks menu no stands in stark contrast to the feast laid out for the fat cat contributors to the only House Republican to be linked to each of the trifecta of ethics scandals (Abramoff, Cunningham, and DeLay/ARMPAC).
Attend if you can.
If you can't, contribute to and/or volunteer for the Democrat who is going to unseat Capito in November, Mike Callaghan.
The Callaghan campaign site is "campaign link"
The campaign site uses PayPal, so, if you're someone who doesn't like using PayPal, here is a link to an Actblue "actblue link"
Read on for info on the rally and why we should be backing Mike Callaghan to the hilt. If Bush is going to raise a million for one his corrupt vassals, we ought to be able to come up with a hundred grand for her opponent.
First, let's get the info to the activists who might be able to attend.
Here is the info from an article in the Charleston newspaper. The link itself will just take you to the paper site. They seem to be designing their links to force you to go to the main page to find anything. But the article has addresses, times and all. A couple who live across the strret from the house where the Bush/Capito event is being staged has offered the use of their yard for the protest.
PROTEST INFO
Now, on to the question of the election:
I have blogged repeatedly on this race, so I will not go into as much detail as I usually do. Instead let me offer you links to my past efforts as well as one from Davidnyc at Swingstateproject.
First, Capito is a Wall Street Journal Republican, a shill for the extraction, finanical services, and pharmaceutical industires.
She's in the pockets of the polluters and the mountaintop mining operators who are ravaging the landscape of West Virginia.
She is an advocate of privatizing Social Security, despite the obvious conflict of interest arising from her husband's position as an executive with a financial services firm.
She is at the beck and call of the prescription drug manufacturers. As Vice Chair on the GOP Task Force on Prescription Drugs, she played a leading rule in forcing the Tauzin Rule on Average Wholesale Pricing into the legislation creating the Medicare Prescritpion Drug program. You will recall the Capito/Tauzin rule prevents the federal government from negotiating lower bulk prices for purchases under the Medicare prescription drug program.
In fact, the Capito/Tauzin provision requires the federal government to pay full-pop retail...the highest list price for medicine for our seniors. Guess that's why Cheney lauded her so copiously in this Bush White House news release
The Republican PR machine has a knack for naming their legislation the opposite of what it actually designed to achieve. Just like No Child Behind means Every Child Abandoned, Average Wholesale Pricing means Full List Price. Imagine if the Washington Republicans had passed a law requiring every person who buys a car to pay sticker price. Well, that is exactly what they did on prescription drugs.
As mentioned before, Capito is the only House Republican of whom I am aware tied to all three of the Ethics Trifecta.
Capito was the largest single recipient of Tom DeLay's dirty money, as ably blogged by Daividnyc at Swingstate. Capito had to donate to charity thousands of dollars of contributions from Randy "Duke" Cunningham after his conviction. And Capito was tied to the Abramoff scandal in its Safavian aspect in which one of her top aides acted as one of the levers used in influencing the GSA.
So, she is vulnerable, especially in a district like WV-02 with its two-to-one Democratic edge in registration and historically populist political tradition. Her election was an historical accident, the result of circumstances working in her favor temporarily in a traditionally Democratic district.
For background on the district, read this post on Our Congress
For Daividnyc's take on Capito's vulnerabily as well as links to his other posts on this race, read his work at swingstatepost
For more background from me on this race, check out these past posts:
analysis of level of endangerment
Capito damaged by float of Byrd challenge
last weeks, plea for funds
She had the wind at her back in the past. Now she faces a gail-force wind in her face. Mike Callaghan is going to take her seat away in 2006. All he needs is a little help from us.
Mike Callaghan is the real deal, a credible challenger who can flip a Republican-held district back to Democratic control. His skills as a reatils campaigner are exceptional. In past post, some have questioned my estimation of his abilities. Well, after winning the Democratic primary against an opponent who outspent Callghan 15-to-one on paid ads, Callaghan's retails skills are no longer questionable.
Callaghan is a pro-choice progressive running a populist campaign centered on universal health care, ethics reform, more federal support for education, and getting out of Iraq.
What more could you ask?
On top of that, there is an enormous symbolic importance to this race.
In our zeal to win back the House, we are embracing tricky little gambits...like the Northeastern Strategy and other misguided notions that we can get to 218 seat without regaining the ability to compete in rural areas and border and southern states.
Falling into tactical mistakes like the Northeastern Strategy will ultimately be an epic mistake strategically. Not only does it implicitly legitimate the criticisms of those like Zell Miller who claim the Democrats are a national part no more, such an approach actively seeks to make the Democratic Party a regional insititution rather than an national one. We must be able to compete and win everywhere.
Besides, it is not good for the country to have parties didided on regional grounds. Don't much like centrifugal force.
If the DCCC, unions and activists embrace this tactical idiocy, we are doomed in the long run. The Republicans get to keep competing for seats nationally while we are limited to the Northern tier and coasts.
What we need to do is go on a counterattack, reclaim tradionally Democratic seats in the rural areas generally, and Southern and border states in particular which we have of late ceded to the GOP. We need to shatter the myth of GOP invincibility in rural districts. And WV-02 is a great place to start...for the reasons I've laid out in the linked posts.
But, if we start picking off rural seats while retaining the cities and inner burbs, we leave the GOP nothing but the exurbs. And we can fight there as well.
In any fight, one should choose one's ground wisely. In WV-02 we have a district where the lay of the land favors a Democratic candidate. We need to take a stand there. And we have a challenger who can win this fight.
Right man. Right place, Right time.
All he needs is some money.
So crack open the wallets
Callaghan Campaign Site
actblue link for KOS folks
An, btw, can someone tell me how to insert pix and grqphics into these diaries? I have a great picture of Shelley and W smooching I'd love to have to stuck in there, not to mention tons of charts on past voting trends that would illustrate how easily we can pick off this seat.
Bush doesn't look as aroused in the Shelley smooch as he did kissing Lieberman. Interesting. Never thought Joe had that kind of sexual charisma.
Thanks for reading. Now, go donate.