Nodler's in

Not exactly shocking news, but Gary Nodler is now officially in the race to replace Roy Blunt in Congress. At his announcement event today in Springfield, he had a lot of red meat for the right-wing base: abortion is bad, gay marriage is bad, stem cell research is bad. Paradoxically, he said that debt is "Public Enemy Number One," but the "very first order of business is securing our borders." Go figure.

Now in campaign mode, Nodler is railing against President Obama and the "ultra liberal Congress" for their spending practices. I guess we're supposed to forgot about the fact that the state budget he helped craft just a few weeks ago uses $1.2 billion in federal recovery money, considerably more than proposed by Governor Jay Nixon.

For more, check out the contemporaneous Twitter coverage from Dave Catanese and Chad Livengood.

Here's footage of his announcement from KY3:

There were also a couple of interesting personnel notes:

• Speaker Ron Richard introduced Nodler at the event. Yikes.
• Gregg Keller is helping Nodler's campaign. Maybe the Sarah Steelman campaign manager gig didn't work out like he expected?

Also: Can someone translate Nodler's First Amendment line?  I'm not sure what this is code language for: "I believe that the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion." Who's offended Gary by trying to take away his religion?