Getting Under Their Skin

Dave Weigel's piece on Dem Rep. Alan Grayson is worth a read as Grayson presses on against the Tea Party with a "kick them in the teeth" mentality and doing it without fear despite arguably being the Tea Party's number one House target in 2010.

Few other Democrats in Grayson's position talk like this. Some conversations with voters in the district demonstrate why. In 2008, they voted for Grayson and the Obama-Biden ticket, narrowly, because of disgust with the Bush administration's failures. It was tough to find a job then. It's tougher now. That lends more credibility to the critiques of Republicans like Webster, who promise to kick-start the economy by cutting taxes on businesses and slashing entitlement spending.

It's a critique that appeals even to voters like Jeff Evans, 49, who was laid off from his trucking job in December 2009. He was receiving unemployment benefits until a Republican filibuster stopped them this summer, leaving him without a revenue stream for weeks. But even though Grayson and his fellow Democrats eventually restored his benefits, Evans isn't sure he will support Grayson. It would do him more good, he said, and allow him to keep his dignity, if they "let the small businesses create more jobs."

Grayson knows how popular that argument is. The solution: Argue that Republicans have no credibility to make it. He pivots off of one of Webster's ideas, a proposal to cut the budget to what it was in 2007. Webster suggests that Floridians were perfectly well off when the government spent at that lower level. Grayson prefers to ask whether voters realize that a cut like that would mean lower Social Security payments.

"It's a stupid idea," says Grayson. "Nobody has a time machine, OK? The world has changed a little bit since 2007. For one thing, there're a lot of more people out of work." Soon he's on a roll, explaining how $12 trillion of capital disappeared in the "Bush implosion" of 2008. That's who voters need to blame, he says. Why aren't they as angry as he is?

"In 18 months, two centuries of work, the collective effort of millions of people, all gone," says Grayson of the financial crisis. "So now the Republicans want to go back to 2007? It's a little bit late for that."

If the GOP is going to take back the House, they'll have to take down Dems like Alan Grayson, period.  They can't afford to ignore him.  He's the one Democrat in a red district who should, by any stretch of the imagination, be a Blue Dog.  He's an unapologetic liberal and if there really is a Republican wave this year, Grayson should be among the first to drown and take a double-digit loss.

Grayson, to his credit, isn't backing down.  Would that more Democrats would get that message...which is exactly why the GOP wants to bury him.  Should Grayson survive, why, other Democrats might develop a spine too.

And the Republicans can't afford that.