Repeat After Me: “Just Say No To the GOP”

I like Debbie Wasserman-Shultz. But if she wants to stay neutral in Flordia races because she’s friendly with Republican House members there, she ought to give up her job on the DCCC’s Red-to-Blue program.

Steve Clemons:

Just for the record, I’m not in favor of knocking out all Republicans either — so perhaps I have a bit of the Wasserman Schultz sin in my own file. I was for instance supportive of Maryland Eastern Shore anti-Iraq war Republican Wayne Gilchrest who lost his primary battle recently.

But the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen are not moderate in any sense of the word, are embracers of Bush’s wars, and have been responsible for sustaining a counter-productive embargo of Cuba by the United States that 183 nations of the world voted against us on this past year in the United Nations.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is helping to defend the political turf of not the best in the Republican Party — but the worst.

Joe Garcia, the Democrat who is running against Mario Diaz-Balart, has the accompanying YouTube — which asks the Republicans to stop the demagoguery about Cuba. Why isn’t Wasserman-Schultz supporting him?

As Howie Klein says, her responsibilities at Red-to-Blue are not ambiguous:

Her job at Red to Blue is clear: to help Democratic challengers beat Republican incumbents. Simple. But she says "she doesn’t want to stab GOP members of her own delegation in the back." Odd, since in 2006 she led the battle to oust Republican Clay Shaw– who was far more moderate than the 3 right-wing whackos she won’t help Democrats defeat. In fact it was her work to help get rid of Shaw that landed her the Red to Blue co-chair job! Florida Democrats are furious, dismayed, appalled.

Rahm Emanuel and I may have vastly different ideas about what constitutes a good Democrat, but as DavidNYC notes, in his tenure at the DCCC he was (rightly) uncompromising about this kind of stuff.

If you feel like raising a wee bit of a stink about this, you can do so here:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (campaign office):
E-mail: AskDebbie@DWSforCongress.com
Phone: 202-741-7154

DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen (campaign office):
E-mail: chris@vanhollen.org
Phone: 301-942-3768

DCCC Headquarters:
Contact form
Phone: 202-863-1500

The chummy, good-buddy incumbency protection program is in large part the reason that we continue to utter the words "Senator Lieberman." Some boundaries really need to be set, because Wasserman-Shultz is clearly crossing the line.

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1. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Won’t Draw “Lines in the Sand” – Except When She Does
2. Bill Nelson Says No to the Public Option “Opt-Out”
3. Liveblogging the House Rules Committee: HR 3962 (Part 2)
4. The Political Calculus of the Public Option
5. Rahm Cutting Deals To “Go Easy” On Republicans in 2010 Who Vote For Supplemental?