The New Roy Blunt

Roy Blunt is done pretending that he doesn't love the DC party scene, at least for a few more years.

SPOTTED, walking the red carpet last night at the Ford's Theatre screening of Robert Redford's “The Conspirator,” opening Friday... Sen. Roy Blunt

Billy Long’s campaign has been centered around the notion that he’s a political outsider, a “citizen legislator” who is “fed up” with what he sees as the ear-marking, over-taxing, bailing-out ways of Washington. Long’s success against more experienced candidates like Gary Nodler and Jack Goodman in the 7th District primary earlier this month even garnered him some national attention in the editorial pages of the New York Times. Columnist Gail Collins took special note of Long’s success in the 7th as a possible harbinger of a national trend. Collins reasoned that Roy Blunt easily withstood formerly toupee’d would-be insurgent Chuck Purgason’s primary challenge because Missourians aren’t troubled by supporting insiders, even though Blunt is “so far inside he could be a coal miner.” But Long’s victory, she asserted, complicated the message of facile support for insiders.

C-SPAN has an incredible new(ish) video archive that you should check out when you have a few minutes to kill or need a stroll down memory lane.  You can search videos by person, year, or topic, and even search in transcripts of Congressional proceedings and covered events.  Want to watch John Danforth talk about Robert Bork in 1987?  No problem.  Forgot what Harold Volkmer looks like? Here he is talking about the 1990 Farm Bill. Or maybe you'd like to watch Chris Farley impersonate Newt Gingrich in front of Newt Gingrich.

Or, if you prefer, you can watch Roy Blunt talk about being best buds with Tom DeLay, in Roy Blunt's own words. 

ROY BLUNT AT TOM DELAY TRIBUTE DINNER - MAY 12, 2005
At an American Conservative Union dinner held to honor DeLay, Blunt among "those...who are closest to Tom." Blunt concluded: "I've got to tell you, whether it's the well of the House or a well in any other fight, if I had to choose a man to go to the well with, it would be my friend Tom DeLay."

What do you think Roy Blunt thinks when he hears his GOP colleagues say things like this?

"We are not the same Republican party that was fired in 2006," [Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)] said. "Not only are we dedicated to cleaning up the process, we also want to take the money and put it towards retiring the debt."

I ask, of course, because Blunt was fired in 2006.  Literally.  He was rejected by his own colleagues in his bid to be permanent House Majority Leader because of "his deep ties to the lobbying effort, his status-quo agenda, and his close relationship with ex-House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay." 

Cantor's comments are specifically about the House Republicans' new disdain for Congressional earmarks, and a new proposal shamelessly co-sponsored by Blunt, heretofore a  "proud and prolific earmarker."

I can't imagine that anyone who was awake from 2000-2008 is buying this.

Demonstrating an ongoing concern with his record of supporting earmarks in Washington, Roy Blunt today signed on as a co-sponsor of a GOP plan to ban earmarks for one whole year.  It's not exactly a bold stand for Blunt -- all but 12 Republicans agreed to co-sponsor the resolution, sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA).

If there's ever been an election year about-face, this is it.  Blunt has been a  "proud and prolific earmarker" in Congress, and many of the Republicans hoping to take his Seventh Congressional District have openly distanced themselves from his record on the issue.  For instance, Sen. Jack Goodman has described the earmarking practice celebrated by Blunt and Sen. Kit Bond as "awful."

In 2007, a Center for Public Integrity investigation showed that Blunt was the only member of the Congressional leadership to participate in a controversial method of providing earmarks to those represented by former-staffers-turned lobbyists.

Also in 2007, the editorial board of the Springfield News-Leader hammered the Velvet Hammer for playing "games" with earmarks, noting that he "allowed earmarks to get out of control during an era of no accountability." 

This is a real paragraph from the Family Research Council Action PAC's press release announcing their endorsement of Roy Blunt in the U.S. Senate Race:

"Roy Blunt is a true friend of the family. He is a leader and proven champion of the values that make America the greatest country in history," said Tony Perkins, Chairman of FRC Action PAC. "We need conservative senators who will fight to defend our faith, family and freedoms against the radical anti-family leadership in the Senate and the corruption that affects so many Members."

Perkins must have been running the FRC from another planet for the last decade.  Blunt, as the House GOP's "official K Street liaison," was twice named as one of the "most corrupt members of Congress" by a nonpartisan watchdog group. "Blunt's ethics issues stem from the misuse of his position to benefit family members, his connections to Jack Abramoff, and a trip paid for by a foreign agent," CREW wrote in 2006.  That same year, Public Citizen declared that Blunt's "ties to special interests leave him unfit to lead."  In fact, his GOP colleagues refused to make him the permanent GOP leader in 2006 precisely because he was directly connected to the scandalous leadership of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff.

Blunt has long been telling Missourians that he's the most ethical kind of politician. For instance, here's how he presented himself to voters in 1992:

But it's 2010, and we've seen what Blunt has done in Washington -- so it's hard to take the words in Perkins' endorsement seriously.

Today in the Missouri Record, David Steelman expresses his disgust with Roy Blunt, Peter Kinder, Ron Richard, Allen Icet and the other "budget sissies" in the Missouri House.  

First, thinly-veiled shots at Roy Blunt:

Face it, while the current majority is breaking all spending records, the records they broke were set by a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress and a two term Republican president.  Despite Karl Rove’s conservative appearances on the cable networks, he invented the idea of “compassionate conservatism” to justify an increasingly large government, a lack of fiscal responsibility and the use of our money in earmarks to fatten campaign coffers and pay off favors.  My question to any Republican candidate this year:  Have you learned your lesson?  If so, prove it.

Roy Blunt told Mike Ferguson and his radio audience on The Eagle yesterday that critics of his Washington record are confusing his "real record" with a "mythical record."  Blunt flatly rejected any criticism of his support for deficit spending and leadership during the Bush years, saying his record on spending is "pretty good."

FERGUSON: You mentioned the tea party activists, and the sorta fiscal conservative activism. And when looking back, there's a lot of criticism of you, not just for, like, the TARP vote and the bailout votes, but for your role in the leadership of the Republican Party at the time.  Do you regret any of those votes?  And what do you have to say to those folks who are skeptical -- at best -- because the Republican Congressional record on spending isn't all that great in recent years.

Try not to laugh when reading this story in The Hill about how Roy Blunt is different from the other GOP leaders in Washington:

Rich Chrismer, a spokesman for Blunt’s campaign, said the candidate has tried to distinguish himself from inside-the-Beltway politicians by keeping close tabs on the Tea Party.

"Roy Blunt is doing something they’re not doing in Washington," said Chrismer. "He’s listening to them and paying attention to their concerns. We’re excited that many people who have not been involved in politics before are getting involved in the process."

Roy Blunt would like you to believe that he's never actually been to his office in the Rayburn House Office Building.

Speaking with tea party darling Dana Loesch on 97.1 FM this week, Blunt said he had absolutely no idea if there's a members-only elevator in the House of Representatives -- and if there is, it's a bad thing. 

LOESCH:I wanted to ask, you know we heard what [Kentucky Senator Jim] Bunning** said about there being a Senator-only elevator. Is there a Representatives only elevator?

BLUNT: I don’t know if there is or not. I’ve never paid any attention to it. And actually, I don’t know that we should even think about getting ourselves where we’re so isolated that you can’t ride on the elevator with other people.

Listen to their exchange:

Roy Blunt is either the least observant person on the planet, or he's not being honest with Loesch and her radio audience. As even the casual tourist can tell you, there are members-only elevators in the House office buildings.  In fact, for at least part of Blunt's tenure in Washington, there were Capitol staff whose only job was to keep the general public off the designated carriages.

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-K Street) was on KMOX's Mark Reardon Show yesterday, talking about why he's awesome, why Democrats are dummies, etc. As he has in the past, Blunt made the demonstrably false claim that he and the House GOP leadership never passed bills without Democratic votes.

When we were in the majority, we were always part of such small majorities that we never passed a bill -- now you can win some money at this after work today wherever you go -- we never passed a bill that didn't have Democrats vote for it.  Not one time. Not one time.

And we probably never passed a bill that some of our our more moderate Republicans didn't vote against it because their district.  But we always had to reach out. We didn't have this potential to just do whatever we wanted to do.  And even when we would send bills to the Senate, as we did over and over again on medical liability reform and associated health plans, there have never been in a hundred years sixty elected Republican Senators in the Senate at the same time.

Listen:

I hope no one took his bet. 

Yesterday on the Allman in the Morning radio program, Roy Blunt was asked about Michael Steele's very loud condemnation of recent GOP leadership.  Predictably, Blunt wasn't too happy with Steele's assessment that Republican leaders (including Blunt) were "enablers for big government" and "screwed up." In responding to a question from host Jamie Allman, Blunt reminded listeners  that he wasn't actually the Speaker or President when he all that 'enabling' and 'screwing up' was happening. 

I think he was critical of the President and the Republican leaders. And, you know, I was one of the Republican leaders. I wasn't the Majority Leader at the time, I wasn't the Speaker at the time, I wasn't the Leader in the Senate at the time, I wasn't the President.

Listen:

Blunt was the acting Majority Leader after Tom DeLay was indicted, and should have been asked to explain what he meant by "I wasn't the Majority Leader at the time."  Regardless, his comments were clearly intended to downplay his role as a key leader for Republicans when they controlled Congress.  Yet any suggestion that Roy Blunt wasn't a key part of all Republican legislation -- good or bad, depending on your perspective -- is absurd. 

In Poplar Bluff we are being treated to the next step of the tea party movement.  A constitutionalism rally at the Rodgers theater.  

Roy Blunt will be a speaker there.  I thought the tea baggers were critical of the old republican guard but I guess the next step is to go full circle and support the poster boy for the republican elite and pork barrel spending.

If I didn't know better I would think the whole tea bag thing was an attempt to get the republican base charged up and has nothing to do with reform or changing business as usual.

This republican rally is being called the next generation of the tea party. 

Looks like the old generation of republicans without any new ideas.

On the long list of things Roy Blunt would rather not talk about in 2010, his leadership in passing George Bush's Medicare Part D legislation is probably near the top of the list.  The tactics employed to just get the bill out of the House are disgusting enough, and then there's the fact that Blunt and his fellow GOP leaders didn't even bother trying to pay for the huge expansion in federal spending. 

Unexpectedly, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) spoke this weekend about the fiscal leadership (or lack thereof) from Bush, Tom Delay, Blunt and the rest of the gang.

Following up on last week's discussion about (some) House Republicans' outrage with the addition of already-passed hate crimes legislation to the defense authorization bill, Clark at Show Me Progress reminds us that Roy Blunt had no problem tacking on additional measures when he, Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert were in charge.

In 2006, for example, Blunt and the elite GOP leadership "engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits," adding language to a DOD appropriations bill at the last minute, "without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee." From Show Me Progress:

Right before Christmas in 2005, the Republican leadership, which controlled both chambers of Congress and included Roy Blunt, decided that the defense authorization bill was missing something. Sure, it had already passed the House and the Senate AND negotiated through the conference committee that ironed any differences between the two versions, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and then House Majority Whip Roy Blunt came to the conclusion that the vaccine liability bill which had not previously been able to make it through Congress should somehow be quietly put into the defense authorization bill.

Roy Blunt has been making a fair amount of noise in recent weeks about his desire to schedule debates with Robin Carnahan instead of his actual primary opponent, Chuck Purgason. It's an understandable strategy; Lord knows Blunt can't afford an honest discussion of what he's been doing in Washington for the past ten years.

Blunt's alleged willingness to engage in an open discussion is more than a little hypocritical, of course, because he's unwilling to "take the heat" from his primary opponent -- and because he has a documented record of avoiding public debates in previous campaigns.

In September 2004, the News-Leader called Blunt to task for refusing to debate his general election opponent. Keep in mind that this editorial was printed 58 days before the 2004 election (we still have 413 days to go until the 2010 elections).

Ten ways to survive hard times, from a Washington Insider who's seen it all.

1. Turn in Your Medicare Card and Regain Your Freedom. 
   It would have been best if Medicare had never been created. (Of course, I don’t have Medicare yet, but when I'm eligible I promise not to defile my body with such commie, socialism-tainted medical benefits.)
    
2. Embrace Your Inner Crazy.
   Get in touch with the "birthers," the “deathers” and the “gunners.” Spouting nonsense at public meetings relieves pent up stress and helps you forget your real troubles. It works for me.
    
3. Sell your house.
   I did and banked more than $1.5 million dollars. That made me feel good.
    
Read More »
Share
• Tweet Widget
• Google Plus One
• Facebook Like

Yesterday, after Roy Blunt finished telling The Eagle's radio audience it would have been best for "the marketplace" if Medicare and Medicaid never existed, Blunt preposterously claimed his health care plan is "actually much more detailed than their plan has been." 

Not too long ago, Thomas Schweich (RhymesWithBike) believed Roy Blunt's candidacy for the GOP Senate primary signified "The End of the Missouri Republican Party." Schweich foresaw "advertisements showing grainy pictures of [Blunt's] family members, trumpeting that they are lobbyists for some powerful industries that have hurt ordinary Missourians," and warned his fellow Republicans that a Blunt on the ticket in November 2010 was "in all likelihood a recipe for disaster."

"Most everyone knows it, yet only a few will say it out loud," Schweich wrote.

But that was March, and now it's June. Schweich was offered a backroom deal to avoid a primary, and he took it.  Never mind that he previously believed such deals were the product of "the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state, which appears to be in denial about the unfortunate route that we are traveling right now."

Now it's Schweich who's in denial.