22 thoughts on “The Man Speaks”

  1. I’d like to suggest a new phrase: getting in the Republicans’ face and telling them the truth without apology is going “Full Metal Grayson.”

  2. For far too long the Republicans, who’ve hit rock bottom and therefore have nothing to lose, have played fast and loose with the truth. Death panels and Obamacare will kill grandma; health care reform will allow high school students to obtain abortions during their lunch hour; the purpose of the Census is ti enable Obama to separate Republicans from Democrats so he can send Republicans to concentration camps; Democrats are going to take away our guns; Al Gore is pushing the climate change myth so he can make millions–the idiocies go on and on. Because, you see, having nothing to offer, the Republicans’ only hope of making a political come back rests solely upon whether or not they can cause the Democratic majority–and Obama, by extension– to fail. That the American people will suffer as a consequence of these lies is immaterial.

    I know that you already know this. I also know you know that the Dems have been reluctant to flex their muscles because they’re in a more difficult place: they must try to walk a narrow tight rope between the corporations that fill their campaign coffers and the majority of Americans who voted them into office.

    Then along comes Grayson. Who doesn’t owe a damn thing to anybody. Who just flat out tells it like it is. God–you gotta love the man.

  4. I love this guy. I lived in Ocala until I was 18. My grandfather was US Representative from the adjacent district for over 20 years. They’ve never had one like Alan Grayson until now. He has led with principle from the beginning rather than learning the dirty game that good old boys seem to lear so quickly. God bless him.

    I call home to try to find out how he is being received and can’t really get a sounding. It sounds like people are too dumbfounded and conflicted to know what to make of him. His district includes the largely rural part of the Ocala National Forest area. My guess at the demographics has him with a largely blue collar contituency.

  6. Pat Pattillo,
    I was watching the tube with my wife last night when Grayson was on.
    She commented that it’s amazing he was elected in that district, which is strongly conservative; he won the seat from Ric Keller (R) fatfarm. Keller’s major accomplishment is loosing 75 lbs while in office. O.K., that is a bit mean, and I applaud anyone who sets out to loose a “few” pounds, but that is really about all Keller accomplished.

    The fact that Grayson won in that district speaks volumes about how the Republican party is getting out of touch with the “little people”. Most working class Republicans I know are pretty damned fed-up with that party, but the better off “business class” people are still clinging to the hope of the old party resurrecting its’self (good luck with that!)

    That Ocals National Forest area has many multi-million dollar horse farms that breed and train world class race hourses. There is even a bridge over !-75 that was built specifically to accomodate horses and their riders ( equestrian overpass)
    That is almost as bad as the bridge to no where, but who am I to blow against the wind?

  7. What Muldoon said. Rep. Grayson has earned the tagline from the Shirley Chisholm documentary that was made a few years back–he’s “unbought and unbossed.”

  8. I like Grayson a lot, and have for some time, but his notoriety begs the question: where have all the other Dems been for years who could have been pointing out the lies of the GOPS and the conservatives in their own party? What became of the progressives who used to stand up in Congress once upon a time and take no prisoners, with a passion that was more real and more scathing than all the Republicans that do so, today? It seems that the modern Dems are only the Party of Rahm, and interested in quiet deals and chattering nervously when anybody looks their way.

    Grayson wouldn’t have been the exception at one time. He would have always been in a minority, but it would have been a distinguished one. Nowadays, he’s a minority of one, while every slack-jawed moron gets up and lies his or her face off for the monied interests. Makes you wonder.

  9. Balakirev,
    “What became of the progressives who used to stand up in Congress…?”
    They got in on the corporatist game to line their own pockets. There’s still a handful of the good ones left, but not enough.
    We need to vote out these corporatist stooges and put in real LIBERALS (there, I said ‘the word!’), real progressives. Until then, same ol’, same ol’…

  10. Muldoon said it best, “they must try to walk a narrow tight rope between the corporations that fill their campaign coffers and the majority of Americans who voted them into office”

    That’s our political system. Both the Republican crazies and Democrat wimps spend every waking hour raising money for the next election — either they try to hook our fears or hook our dreams to get those votes. I hear Grayson is richer than rich so he can live outside of the money game. He can speak his mind, has the freedom to do the right thing, and can actually try to protect the best long term interest of the people he respresents.

    As long as the money game is the real game in our political system, we’ll have a House, Senate and White House of wimps trying to walk that tight rope between corporate donors and voters.

  11. OMG, dude. We need human cloning!

    Yesterday, David Axelrod gave a speech in my city. He took questions afterward. Someone got up and asked if we really are going to see a public health-coverage option, and Axelrod deferred the question to… Ben Nelson. No kidding. Senator Ben-barfbag-Nelson who’s sitting smugly in the front row, weighed down by all that health-insurance-company money in his pockets. I suppose Axelrod was trying to make the point that in the end, it’s up to Congress, but I have to wonder where the eff the White House’s leadership is, with an answer like that?

    “Full Metal Grayson” is way cool with me. And 5 Stars on the YouTubes (every time he speaks!) is encouraging. If Americans take to the titanium-spined Grayson, and shun all the spineless Dems, maybe a few more Dems will start to sound like him.

  12. Hi Erinyes,

    If you look at how the congressional districts are split into spindly segments running north south through 3 counties (Orange, Lake and Marion) and running east-west of one another, the 8th district to the west of Ocala where the forest is and the horse farms in the 6th district (my Grandfathers former congressional district) to the west…well, Grayson gets the much less developed “country” side of the country without any rich horse farm constituents.

    I think you’re right though. This does speak to rising blue collar disillusionment with the Republican party. There are fine lines between these blue collar types and even the slightly more wealthy professional types. They talk alike they walk alike and go hunting and fishing in the same forest. One group just drives more recent higher end, gun-rack equipped pickups and feel that they’re somehow beneficiaries pf the resulting largesse when corporations have carte blanche, even when they don’t.

    I had a couple of childhood friends who ran for office there who were fairly conservative Republicans and were defeated by somewhat more gritty, less educated, blue collar fundie types which also abound there. There never really was much conservative cohesion that ran across class lines and there are no fixed dividing lines either.

    To me it just seems like you can only fool people to vote against their interests for so long while you so extremely and obviously work against their interests. They eventually catch on.

  13. I do have to add that I think a lot of new congress persons get into office thinking they have to keep their head down, learn the ropes (when others should unlearn), and do like the next guy. The environment is not conducive to original thinking.

    It takes a very special person to speak their convictions…confident, principled and more determined to stand by their principles than to take what most consider a safer route that would ensure their re-election.

    It’s not just the types we vote for but the types who are somehow convinced to run. The biggest question in any campaign is who can the candidated turn to for financial support? Where can they find friends with deep pockets?

    Populists don’t always get re-elected. Soemtimes their charm wears off. You can bet that Grayson will be targeted by the GOP. I think he relishes the coming battle. He’s a fighter.

  14. There was a great little biography of Alan Grayson over at DailyKos a couple weeks ago (search for it, if you’re inclined). Some highlights:

    – he’s independently wealthy. I forget the kind of business he started, but it was successful. He’s something like the 16th wealthiest person in the House, IIRC.

    – he grew up poor. A significant event in his life as a kid was when a bully tried to throw him under a bus. Now you know where the fight comes from.

    Not everyone has Alan’s brains or tenacity, but an obvious, badly needed reform is the public financing of election campaigns. We wouldn’t have to wait for that blue moon event of a millionaire hero to bust up the corrupt cabal on Capitol Hill.

    Others (notably Digby) have made much of how Alan uses the patented Republican, over the top, hissy fit against them. Alan’s rhetoric is a bit much, but it’s way past time for the Democrats to fight fire with fire, and of course we’re all thrilled that Alan is showing the way.

  15. Go Grayson! I just hope the Virginia reps are listening to him. They were not committed to a public option when I emailed them. I got some mealy mouthed we are looking over the ideas email reply.

  16. Cruising the web today, I saw an interesting bit on Alan Grayson at Down With Tyranny. Grayson is world travelled – and was featured in Brave New Films’ Rethinking Afghanistan (click the link to find a viewing near you). Video of this interview is here, transcript:

    I think that the aid program is a fig leaf trying to make Congress and the American people feel better about the war and about killing. I think that diplomacy in the areas of fig leaf to try to make the American people think that there is some constructive alternative to the war when the war itself is destructive and not constructive.

    I think that the basic premise that we can alter afghan society is greatly flawed. Afghanistan is simply the part of Asia that was never occupied by the Russians or the English in the Great Game. It’s not a country; it’s not even a place. It’s just an empty place on the map. It’s terra incognita. People who live there are a welter of different tribes, different language groups, different religious beliefs.

    All over the country you find different people who have nothing to do with each other except for the fact that we call them Afghans, and they don’t even call themselves Afghans. They’re Tajiks or they’re Pashtuns, or they’re Hazzaras or someone else. The things that hold them together are simply the things that we try to create artificially.

    And the idea that we could transform that society or any other society through aid I think is entirely questionable. I’ve never seen it happen; probably never will happen. If you go to the Stan countries north of Afghanistan, and I’ve been to all of them; what you find is that the way that the Russians altered that society was by crushing it. Stalin killed half a million Muslims in Kazakhstan, in Turkmenistan, in Kyrgyzstan, in Uzbekistan.

    He simply sliced off the head of that society in order to remake it in the image that he wanted. And I think that we would have to do no less if we wanted to remake Afghanistan in our image. We’d have to destroy it in order to save it, and I don’t think the American people are ever going to do that to anybody. So I think that the underlining premise is simply wrong.

    I’ve been to 175 countries all around the world including Afghanistan, including every country in that region, and what I’ve seen everywhere I go is that there are some commonalties everywhere you go. Everywhere you go people want to fall in love. It’s an interesting thing. Everywhere you go, people love children. Everywhere, they love children. Everywhere you go, there’s a taboo against violence. Every single place you go. And everywhere you go, people want to be left alone. And that’s the best foreign policy of all. Just to leave people alone.

    This is change I can believe in. This is the kind of guy I want for president.

  17. Very good, Moonbat.
    Fantasies abound regarding Afghanistan.
    What IS the purpose of this war?
    Eric Margolis and Pepe Escobar (and others) say it’s all about the energy corridor.
    Escobar calls the area “Pipelinestan”.
    I have NEVER heard this mentioned on the MSM, including MSNBC.
    The official reasons, which tend to shape-shift, include making the place safe for democracy ( a euphemism for getting the BOA, CHASE,KFC, COKE, and other Us corporations up and running in Central Asia.)
    Freedom ( we need a bit more of that here!)
    Women’s rights, I guess that includes the right to shop at Victoria’s Secret ( no objections here)

    Getting Bin Laden ( chasing ghosts?)
    Killing “insurgents” ( the whole place is “insurgents”)
    In short, the war in Afghanistan is INSANE.

  19. Others (notably Digby) have made much of how Alan uses the patented Republican, over the top, hissy fit against them.

    I’ve come to realize that we are a nation of composite temperaments ranging from intellectual to emotion and even to hysterial and paranoid. Even Democrats and progressive new media sources seem consumed with the hysteria of the right that seems to push the envelope further out each and every day. I find Grayson’s rhetoric to be measured, effective and just the sort of challenge needed to shame these people and bring those who seem to be so fixated on it (and I include MSM in that) back to earth. There should be immense personal collective shame associated with propagating the sort of corporate sponsored nonsense posing as public opinion that is coming from the right. Pious, sober disapproval has not accomplished that. They have to be called on it and it has to be called out for what it is. There’s a good fight to be had in all this and there has not been much success in the denial of that.

    In the context of a discussion contrasting the Joe Wilson outburst and Graysons “they want you to die” speech John Conyers recently said that everyone just needs to chill out but there’s something in our nature that eschews the weakness of leaving outrageous lies and rhetoric unanswered or responded to tepidly.

    I think there has to be someone like Grayson, over the top or not, to bring things back into focus…to reality. Good for him and us.

  20. Grayson’s not over the top. He’s simply calling the moneyed interests and their stooges on their lies. That’s part of the role those we elect in government should take, in my opinion. Unfortunately, he’s very much a minority of one who dares to speak up–and it’s both amazing and riseable how the wealthy and powerful and their shills try to get him to shut up with cries of “Shame!” and the like.

  21. In a recent post Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks radio show explains how at pivotal points in the right-left dialog (if you can call it that) it can actually help to amp up the volume in some way to change the conversation to a battle that you can win. It’s a matter of framing that takes some edge to accomplish.

    In this game of redneck chess (checkers?) or maybe theatre that just won’t go away Grayson’s assertion that Republicans want you to die if you get sick forces them to explain why they aren’t in favor of healthcare rather than having Dems defend their plan.

    As Uygur puts it “And now the conversation we’re having is whether the health care system is acceptable or if it leads to killing people for profit. Mission accomplished.

    Republican success with their characteristic hyperbole depends upon their continued ability to have Democrats on the defensive but the best defense is a good offense. As regrettable as it is, if it’s theatre the media needs to amplify rhetoric loundly enough for it to be heard then give it to them in spades.

    I also read a report that in many states, districts with the most uninsured (up to 33% in some Florida districts) tend to be represented by Republiicans who oppose healthcare. …can’t find link though.

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