Cross-posted on BloggingForMichigan.com
Once upon a time, WJR-AM was the "station of record" in Detroit. Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey brought Tiger baseball into people's homes; the genial J.P. McCarthy interviewed the city's movers and shakers; and the soothing voice of Jay Roberts kept insomniacs and third-shifters company on "Night Flight." Not any more. The station that once called itself "The Great Voice of the Great Lakes" has become a very large cog in the Republican Noise Machine, spewing out 50,000 watts of right-wing bile to a huge swath of the nation's midsection.
Which makes WJR the perfect audience for Thaddeus McCotter, the flannel-mouthed congressman from Detroit's western suburbs. In person, McCotter talks like a constipated Snidely Whiplash and has a skin thinner than the paper our grandparents used to send airmail letters. The man fancies himself a rock musician. That is, when he's not trying to act like the second coming of William F. Buckley. (Aside to McCotter: it's bad form to use a five-dollar word in a $7.50 sentence.)
There's more below the party line...
Last Friday, while on WJR, McCotter fielded a call from "Greg from Milford." The thankful Greg returned the favor, writing a fan letter that immediately wound up on the website of the House Republican Policy Committee, which McCotter heads.
"Greg from Milford" said that he'd just lost his sales job, and blamed the nasty Democrats for making his predicament even worse. Here, amid the tear-jerking references to his suffering family, are the following Republican talking points:
The stimulus package wants to give $4 Billion to ACORN, a company, I believe, that is under investigation for voter registration fraud.
And the stimulus package wants to spend $335 million on STD prevention? What jobs does that create?
And Barack Obama spends money on overseas abortions.
And Congress is taking an extra $93,000 each for petty cash increases.
And this stimulus package wants $400 Million for HIV prevention. How does that create jobs?
We can’t afford to raise our heat and the stimulus package wants to spend $75 Million on anti smoking ads. How does that create jobs?
And this stimulus bill wants $200 Million for sod on the new mall that’s already $600 million over budget. How is that creating jobs?
Recent polls show that less than 50% of Americans approve of this stimulus bill and yet Congress, with their recent 11% approval rating, the worst in history, tries to ram this bill down our throats.
All that's missing from the letter was the $30 million for the mice. Maybe the cat ate them because Greg couldn't afford cat food thanks to Nancy Pelosi.
Clever, Thaddeus. Really clever. Unfortunately, too clever by half. This letter read as though its true provenance was the war room of the Republican National Committee, not the word processor of a suddenly-redundant Willy Loman.
Salesmen, even those who suddenly find themselves with oodles of time on their hands, don't write letters like this unless they've received the kind of coaching that would make an Olympic hopeful jealous.
Thad's little parlor trick smells more than a little bit fishy. In fact, "Greg from Milford"--assuming there is such a person--bears a strong resemblance to Joe the Plumber Poseur, who materialized out of nowhere with a full set of Republican talking points firmly implanted between his ears. But that's just par for the course for the bubble-bound, "just-say-no", doctrinaire dead-ender Republicans on Capitol Hill.