Almost Heaven

The electors of West Virginia have the opportunity to return to Senate Governor Joe Manchin, a potentially filibuster-breaking Democrat who is a pro-life Catholic, who is a member of the NRA, who is a strong supporter of coal, and who is wanted for the job by the AFL-CIO.

And those of that state's First Congressional District have the opportunity to return Mike Oliverio, another pro-life Catholic and supporter of President Obama's view that marriage is only ever the union between one man and one woman. Oliverio is selling himself as a fiscal conservative, but since he is inside the Democratic Party, he can and must be presented with exactly how fiscally conservative, fiscally responsible, and indeed pro-life, pro-family, patriotic, and generally conservative morally, socially and culturally, neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy are not.

Oliverio's nomination was secured with help from the RNC operatives who purport to be the organised pro-life movement. But he has been nominated now. Once he has also been elected and has thus become a caucusing Democrat on Capitol Hill, then he can be turned. Turned on to the fact that the public option and then the single-payer system, bringing with them the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, would have been, and therefore must be, as vastly more pro-life as they are vastly more responsible and conservative fiscally, compared to enormous public subsidies to the insurance companies, without Stupak-Pitts, in order to appease Blue Dogs who voted against that Bill anyway and "moderate Republicans" who turned out not to exist at all.

Meanwhile, the Pledge to America is being compared to the 1994 Contract with America, but without the decency to dress appropriately when presenting it. Well, we all know the sort that swept onto the Hill in 1994. And, consequently, what happened in 1996.