Pelosi raising cash for Ohio anti-gay/anti-Choice crusader Jennifer GarrisonSaturday, we mentioned that Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent, a Boehner crony and the Republican congressman from the Lansing area of central Michigan, is leading the efforts to allow the Cheney-initiated domestic spying agenda of the N.S.A. to stay in place. Boehner made Rogers, a relatively junior member, chairman of the powerful Intelligence Committee. It's worth noting that Rogers' district, MI-08, has a PVI of R+2 and that Obama beat McCain there 52-46% and narrowly lost out to local boy Mitt Romney 51-48% last year. The DCCC doesn't back Democrats against Rogers. He has a free reelection pass from Steve Israel. This is especially strange since Rogers isn't all that well-liked in his district. A recent PPP poll of MI-08 for MoveOn showed that Rogers has a 42-40% job approval rating and that when voters are informed that he backed the government shutdown-- something the DCCC has been careful not to do-- he would be beaten by a generic Democrat 47-44%. The DCCC has not recruited anyone to run and the local Democrats I've talked to about taking on Rogers have all said it isn't worth running against him while Steve Israel is head of the DCCC.One local elected official told me he wants to run and plans to in 2016 when, he says, he's been told Israel will be gone from the DCCC. "If I thought Israel would just stay neutral, I would run. I know I could beat Rogers. There are several of us who could. People here don't like him. Did you know that last year Lance Enderle beat him in Ingham County? But Israel tells donors to not fund campaigns against Rogers. He was against Enderle. I can't believe Nancy Pelosi lets him get away with this crap. She's outlasted her usefulness too." Last year Senator Debbie Stabenow beat Republican Pete Hoekstra 67-30% in Ingham and 57-39% in Oakland County. It's a very winnable district-- but not without a candidate.Yesterday, the DCCC drummed up some kind of phony deadline for its candidates. Corporate whores like Patrick Murphy, Sean Patrick Maloney, Ann Kuster, Scott Peters and Joe Garcia (all shady New Dems) inundated and burned their lists with contentless e-mails all day begging for money. And this is the one Pelosi sent out on behalf of the DCCC candidates:
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family. Before you pack up the rest of the leftovers, I have a quick favor to ask. Thanks to your tremendous support, we're just 8,835 donations from becoming the first political party committee in history to reach 900,000 online donations on this one-year-out report. Hitting this record-breaking mark would be a tremendous show of grassroots strength for our campaign to win a Democratic House (and a real thorn in Speaker Boehner's side). Can you help put us over the top before tonight's midnight deadline? MIDNIGHT DEADLINE: Click here to give $3 and your gift will be TRIPLE-MATCHED
How rookie and embarrassing is that? What deadline? Who's triple-matching anything? And not a word about a cohesive policy agenda that might motivate anyone to contribute. Maybe that's because Pelosi knows all too well that even if Israel hasn't recruited candidates against the best GOP targets, like Mike Rogers and Fred Upton in Michigan, he will be, once against, wasting millions of dollars on ridiculous loser candidates like the conservative former commander of the Guantánamo gulag, Jerry Cannon and anti-Choice, anti-gay fanatic Jennifer Garrison who opposes the entire Democratic House agenda (from immigration reform, gun safety and ENDA to raising the minimum wage). No, I can't imagine a letter from Pelosi saying, "Please donate to the DCCC so they can use your money to elect Jennifer Garrison, a candidate who already voted against equality for the LGBT community and opposes legal abortions and defeated a minimum wage increase in Ohio." She won't say it… but that's the real effect of her shameless DCCC fundraising.