Tough Progressive Congressman Alan Grayson Is Putting the Fear in Republicans

[Joanne98]

By John Nichols, The Nation
Posted on October 1, 2009, Printed on October 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143021/

Washington Republicans are horrified, horrified, horrified by the bluntness of Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson.

The tough kid from the Bronx (and Harvard Law School) who represents an until recently Republican Orlando-area district pulled no punches Tuesday, when he declared on the House floor: "The Republican health care plan is this: Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly."

After his GOP colleagues recovered from the shock of a Democrat actually calling them out, they demanded an apology.

Grayson returned to the House floor to announce that: "I would like to apologize, I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America."

So unfamiliar with the notion that a Democrat might actually take the healthcare debate seriously enough to try and win it, the Republicans presumed that Grayson had gone off the deep end. The National Republican Congressional Committee screeched: "This is an unstable man who has come unhinged. The depths to which Alan Grayson will sink to defend his indefensible comments know no bounds."

NRCC spokesman Ken Spain claimed in an interview with the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill that: "This is an individual who has established a pathological pattern of unstable behavior."

Grayson hasn't cracked.

The former assistant (on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to current U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, and conservative judicial icon Robert Bork) is dealing in facts.

Indeed, the Harvard grad has seized on a study produced by researchers at his old school that details how 44,000 Americans die annually because they lack health insurance. And he is laughing off a Republican attempt to formally condemn his choice of words.

Georgia GOP Congressman Tom Price does not think it is fair for a Democrat to counter months of Republican hyperbole with actual statistics. So the Georgian has drafted a resolution that accuses Grayson of committing "a breach of decorum and (degrading) the integrity and proceedings of the House."

Grayson's response: "A resolution like that doesn't save one human being's life."

The resolution has yet to be introduced and is unlikely to get far in the overwhelmingly Democratic House. Like the silly Democratic resolution seeking objecting to South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson's boorish behavior during President Obama's address to the Joint Session of Congress, Price's proposal is a meaningless exercise.

Yet, Grayson's more cautious colleagues in the Democratic caucus (notably caucus chair John Larson of Connecticut) say they'll urge their Jewish colleague to back away from some of his remarks -- especially a Holocaust reference that, while on-point to the view of those who see the denial of healthcare to the sick as an act of brutality, seemed gratuitous and unnecessary to politicians who are ill at ease with such passionate language.

Grayson, whose official biography begins with a telling quotation from the Torah ("Justice, justice, ye shall seek..."), shows no signs of backing down.

continued>>>
http://www.alternet.org/politics/143021/tough_progressive_congressman_alan_grayson_is_putting_the_fear_in_republicans

[FiveGoodMen]

1. "Grayson hasn't cracked"

Hear that, the rest of you cowardly fucks?

This is how its done.

[Hepburn]

3. What FiveGood said! KNR n/t

[ThomCat]

6. With a majority of seats, we should have had a dozen or more people

in our part standing up for real healthcare this way, this vocally, this strongly from the very beginning. Why the hell is Grayson up there alone?

Cowardly fucks is absolutely right. :(

[NewJeffCT]

9. There are others out there just as vocal

but, they've been marginalized by the media and nobody listens to them and puts them on the air. I'm sure Rep. Kucinich has spoken equally forcefully, and others. Nobody listens to them.

[AndyA]

2. I hope Grayson digs his heels in and stands firm against these hypocrites.

All of the hypocrites take money from the very industry they are about to legislate. And we wonder why they don't seem to be doing the work of the American people? They are interested in corporate donations, and that comes above all else.

Republicans, check your ethics and honesty at the chamber door. (Giving them credit for having those things in the first place... :eyes: )

[Omnibus]

4. Wouldn't he make a great replacement for Sen Nelson?

We need 250 more reps like Grayson in the House. And 60 Senators like him, too.

[noiretextatique]

5. keep calling the bastards out, rep. grayson

:applause:

[HuckleB]

7. Grayson ROCKS!

This is what we need to fight back!

[sabrina 1]

8. He has led the way in demonstrating how to talk to bullies

Each time they try to use their formerly successful hyperbolic outrage whenever a Democrat stands up to them, he uses it to attack them some more. He has them on the defensive. So shocked are they that they have now resorted to false and stupid claims that he is 'unhinged'. When Ed Schultz asked him if that was not defamation of character, he responded 'I don't know what it is, but it's not doing anything to solve the healthcare crisis'.

Now, he needs other Democrats to back him up. One man or woman cannot do it alone, but if the rest of the spineless Dems would come out swinging in his defense, we could probably get a Single Payer system, never mind a Public Option.

So far, Nancy Pelosi to her credit, has supported him. We'll see what the rest will do. He has given Democrats an opening to finally put Republicans in their place and to ignore, as he does, their childish tantrums while continuing to challenge them to something other than call people names.

[vinylsolution]

10. Keep it up, fella!

We need a Dem with a real spine right now.

May the rest express their support for him ASAP.