Welcome Back McCotter; Update: A few key votes added
**Written by Doug Powers
To my recollection, in the years I’ve been writing about the political scene in my little corner of the blogosphere, I’ve only mentioned Rep. Thaddeus McCotter once, and that was for getting the Led out on the House floor. I’ve kind of liked the guy ever since, but I’m still in a “learning process” as far as getting to know his overall record. I have to admit though that lately McCotter’s been sort of like the movie Roadhouse: Whenever he’s on I stop to watch and I can’t specifically put my finger on why.
On Saturday McCotter announced he’s running for president. Good. “The more the merrier” I say… especially in this election cycle.
The Alaska Dispatch ran an article entitled “10 facts about Thaddeus McCotter.” Here’s item that might stick out most to conservatives:
McCotter once voted for the Employee Free Choice Act, a pro-union bill that would have made it easier for employees to form and join unions to bargain with employers. It’s seen as anti-business, a move he’ll be hard-pressed to defend in the race.
The EFCA is otherwise known as “card check.” McCotter has since called that vote “a mistake.” Is that a sincere retraction? That will be up to McCotter to explain. The good news for Thad is that the Republican candidate the MSM is already trying to anoint as the nominee is credited with being the brainchild behind Obamacare, and that candidate is near the top of most polls to win the GOP nomination. Given that, McCotter’s card check vote might not be all that damaging, especially when it comes bundled with the apology.
Otherwise McCotter seems to have conservative street credentials (with with some dings along the way). Other than some Internet research though, I’m not completely familiar with Thaddeus McCotter. Neither are most voters, so that’s a problem that will obviously need to be addressed.
I’m going to go out on a safe limb (padded, with all sharp edges filed down) and predict that if McCotter makes it deeper into the process, he’ll at least shake things up a bit. I’m from Michigan though so there’s probably a “pulling for the home team” element to my prediction (until three years ago I remained convinced the Detroit Lions would win a Super Bowl before I died).
Here’s McCotter’s “I’m running” announcement on Saturday. He said his son couldn’t make it because he had to work, so if you give Thaddeus McCotter credit for anything, make it for having a kid with the ability to find a job in spite of living in the aftermath of Jennifer Granholm:
(h/t to Weasel Zippers for the video)
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
***
Update from MM: I’ve noted enough of McCotter’s votes over the years to be skeptical of his claim to the Tea Party mantle:
May 8 2008: McCotter was one of the 39 big government Republicans who voted for the Dems’ massive $2.7 billion mortgage bailout bill.
December 10, 2008: McCotter was one of the 32 big government Republicans who voted for the UAW/auto bailout.
February 4, 2009: McCotter was one of 40 tax-hiking Republicans who voted for Obama’s S-CHIP expansion.
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Here I thought Herman Cain lacked schtick.
Reminds me of Marion Barry’s famous quote about crime in Washington D.C.
“Other than the murders, the crime rate in Washington DC is really very low.”
When I’m surprised by something, I like to say … “In the immortal words of Marion Berry, I’ll be GD’d”
My reposnse to being suprised is more predictable.
I’d like for him to expound on WHY his card check vote was a mistake. Did he get fooled, did he not do the research, did he get confused, or did he just get caught?
He’s off my list.
A slap down on Doug by the boss!:8):
That was supposed to be.
As many times that Doug has written here and that was MM’s first public slap down, I think Doug has done well.
P.S. McCotter is off my list as well.
I kinda wish there weren’t so many fish in the barrel, so to speak, with Rs running for POTUS. Just makes it easier for them to get picked off.
I don’t see it as a “slap down”.
I see it as, perhaps a disagreement, and perhaps her bringing facts to the table of which Doug was previously unaware.
***
The Patrona has a memory like a steel bear trap. Nothing ever gets away–and the voting record of a politician is the best way to evaluate their real beliefs. With most of them you just can’t trust what they are saying.
***
They are like Teleprompters–they just repeat what their handlers load into them. And hope the voters have short memories.
***
John Bibb
***
Hey Lucy (McCotter)! You got some splaining to do!
Nope, not gonna work.
Mitt, Newt, Huntsman, & McCotter can all save their money & time and go home now.
Heck, anyone that invokes the name of Reagan should go home too. Saying or implying in words or staged events that they are like Reagan is a sure bet they aren’t.
well, he is not a perfect conservative, if he gets the nod, he is still better than obama. so lets not toss him under the bus just yet, there is plenty of room under there.
I don’t know the guy but think this is the best time to trot all of the potential players out, look at their history, listen to what they have to say, and move’em on, or pass on them. Objective; Get the best possible Conservative candidate, unseat Obambi & associates, erase the past 5 years errors, get our country back on track as the greatest nation on earth. NOT find a candidate that’s simply better than Obamanation!
Thanks for the information on mccotter Doug and Michelle. I hadn’t planned to vote for him in the first place, now there is zero chance!
L
Thaddeus? We all have our faults and failures-we shall see. But with a name like Thaddeus in public school he either was a tough nut or had a really great sense of humor.
WE need to help educate our politicos on Fealty to the Constitution. Herman Cain is so close yet misses some fundamental issues.
Romney and Huntsman, as was Flip & Reach McCain, just flat out do not care what the Constitution is.
God Bless America and have a great day.
McCotter will have to shine brightly in the debates to have any chance of going anywhere with his campaign.
He doesn’t have a natural core constituency to help him over bumps, and he’s never been a governor, or even a mayor. He has no actual experience governing, just legislating.
Simply winning debates will not be enough. He’ll have to totally outclass the rest of the field.
Well nice thing about voting records, they are there for us to see. I also have found him one of those guys I love listening to, maybe it is his odd accent. He has that dry sense of humor I love and I would love seeing him debate Obama. I agree with Doug, the more the merrier. Maybe he can represent the disenchanted union member. I know many of them and they don’t like Obama one bit.
On MM’s update, so McCotter is part of the RINO stampede with the added wrinkle of faux Tea Party mantle. Perry also falsely claims the Tea Party mantle. When exactly did that happen? Tea Party Express? Amy Kremer already revealed that in the end, TPE is a GOP subsidiary.
EFCA “But I was just selling out conservative principles for votes on that one. Those unions need lots of cash in order to petition, yeah, that’s the word, petition the government for redress of grievances.”
$2.7 billion mortgage bailout bill. “Now in all honestly, think about the children who might be housed in these underwater homes, you would not want to be the person to tell them they are evicted, so of course I voted to take money from honest hardworking responsible Americans and turn that money over to irresponsible people who bought more house than they can afford. That’s conservatism isn’t it? Well!! Isn’t it?”
UAW/auto bailout. “As I said before, those unions need money to be able to petition, yeah, that’s the word, petition the government for redress of grievances. Sure seems like when I am helping my constituents, it is the exact same constituents I am helping, at the total expense of the rest doesn’t it. But hey, look, Puppehs and kittehs!!!”
S-CHIP expansion. “Think of the children. If we cannot rape and pillage the strong in order to provide for the weak, then what kind of inhumane monsters are we? Is that the same spiel my democratic opponents use? Well, of course it is.”
Thank you for chiming in MIchelle. Like Doug, I am also from Michigan, but I am very involved in GOP politics and am very familiar with McCotter.
He wrote and spoke very eloquently about SCHIP being the death of the soul of the GOP, and everything he said was spot on.
He stabbed conservatives like me through the heart when he suddenly voted “Yes.”
To the tune of a Monty Python song…Brave, brave, brave Thad McCotter.
But he’s got charisma, and by golly, that’s far more important than a voting record.
Seriously, people seem to go straight to denial mode over this guy. “Well, he had to vote that way to protect himself…” is not a good reason to vote for anybody.
If actions actually spoke louder than words, McCotter wouldn’t even be in this race. But people love this guy – he’s a GOP slick Willie. Nothing he actually does sticks to him. (We get stuck with it, big time.)
I’m talking to my TEA Party about him next week. Maybe you could do the same in your area.
Do you know what he said was his reason for the switch?
McCotter’s awesome. Check out his myriad appearances on FNC’s Red Eye.
I’m seriously considering making a modest contribution to his campaign, in the hopes that he can put together a good enough showing to be a serious contender in the future. And I never give money to anyone except my wife.
Well before we go ga-ga over voting records, compare his to Barrack Obama’s. I know I would agree 100 percent with my voting record, but nobody would ever want me as president.
It bothers me when an individual is elected to represent the people of their state/district, arrives in DC and becomes part of the party back room deals. Then the party can decide how the group will vote. Deciding that certain officials can vote based upon getting reelected whale others have to vote to get the bill passed regardless of how the folks back home feel. By doing this, the party and not the people are represented and we get stuck with bad legislation all to preserve seats for the key party players.
He didn’t announce the switch beforehand – trust me when I say that those of us out here fighting the good fight via phone and fax were totally and utterly blindsided.
It doesn’t take a political scientiest to figure out that he knew it was going to pass regardless and therefore he tossed us to the wolves and saved his own seat.
I’m not immune to political expediency, but I encourage you to go to his blog and read the impassioned call to arms he made about SCHIP. He worked us up into a frenzy, we fought tooth and nail with everything we had, then he voted for it. (Like I said in another post, when he writes and speaks, it is very easy to draw a comparison between him and Reagan. He is that gifted.)
I just don’t remember Reagan caving like that. (Well, maybe the tax hikes, which were supposed to be coupled with future spending cuts that never happened. But he was sold out in that – he didn’t sell himself out to save his own skin.)
Because what he says is far more important than how he votes?
In my opinion Reagan sold out on the amnesty. I didn’t like it then and it was obviously a big mistake. I think we can find problems with his record also.
Thad McKotter? Nope…Next….!
These are not minor objections. Mr. McKotter is clearly one more RINO/DIABLO whose convictions, such as they are, spin with the slightest breeze. And this nation is heading into a hurricane.
He is unnecessary and unwanted. Make him go away.
Neither do I. Personally, I’m glad to see Doug posting here. I read every posting although I do not comment as often as I use to because of my travel schedule (I’m on the road nearly every week).
Since the weak-kneed republicans nominated Dole and McCain I have become very cautious in casting my vote for a democrap-lite. If it were not for Gov. Sarah Palin on McCain’s ticket, I would have voted for Mickey Mouse instead of McCain!
My money will continue to go to Gov. Palin’s PAC and some of those individuals the former Gov. endorses.
Ronaldus Magnus got dorked by Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy et al on that deal. The deal was a one-time amnesty in exchange for sealing the frikkin’ border. Much like the deal McLame wants to sell us.
No matter how many RINOs come out of the woodwork, “generic Republican” remains the only viable GOP candidate.
McCotter voting record
Interesting site, rating Mc Cotter solid conservative. I will check out other candidate voting records.
Anyone that can play a mean guitar can’t be all that bad! And he can handle that “axe” pretty well. Better than that “blowhard” Clinton with his sax. I’d venture to say that he and Huckleberry can play some decent music. After we see where he is coming from and where he wants to go, maybe we can be a better judge of this candidate.
If he knew the battle was lost and he knew it would devastating to his chances for reelection to vote against for it, and if his allies in Congress knew he was going to duck for political cover (common practice in situations like that), then I don’t have any problem with it, and I am surprised if you do.
You’re supposed to make the other poor sod die for his country, not throw your life (political power) away for nothing but a useless mark on a roster.
However, I don’t know that is why he did it, and I’d like to know what he said about it when asked about it, and I’m sure he has been asked. We just don’t know what he said, yet.
We want to know how these guys think. If he gave it up because he was promised something else for his constituents, or he gave it up because they compromised on some issue within the bill he found particularly egregious and he knew the bill was going to pass anyway, then I’d like to know, even if I don’t expect to be voting for him.
Bachmann voting record
One of the biggest differences I saw between her and Mc Cotter:Voted NO on $40B for green public schools. (May 2009), What was Mc Cotter doing voting for 40 billion on this nonsense?
Jim De Mint voting record
He has the perfect voting record
Yup, that’s when Reagan lost me. I felt that the amnesty would result in more illegals. And looky, looky…. what a mess we have today. When dems get what they want, they will never live up to any promises they made to repubs in the trade. Repubs haven’t learned that and keep falling for the empty promises. Instead, the dems should have to deliver first on the promises. A compromise with the dems really means totally agreeing with them.
The above is oh so true…
You,re thinking Roadhouse, I’m thinking Gone in 60 seconds
That site completely destroys the There’s No Difference Between Democrats and Republicans nonsense (as did the legislative struggles to stop Obamacare and this), but don’t get carried away. It has Romney as more conservative than Bachmann and Palin.
I think he really wants to run for Senate against Stabenow, so this is a way for him to raise his profile. However, someone dumb enough to vote for card check is worrisome to be in the senate because we already have a lot of squishy rinos there. I hope the Michigan Tea Party folks can find a good senate candidate for the GOP primary.
Paraphrasing President Reagan’s 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech…
All would-be Republican candidates are RINOs unless proven otherwise.
Like independants are Marxist sympathizers unless proven otherwise.
Cal City Conservative — Not a “slap down” at all!! Just bringing info to the table from previous blog posts here.
I would also agree that it is nonsense to say there is no difference between the two. There are no Jim DeMints or John Flemings in the Democrat party.
The problem is that there is no difference between Mitt Romney and Democrats (well maybe tax policy, but that is just a question of how one feeds the beast), and Mitt is currently the front-runner.
Unless you are saying there is some Democrat, somewhere, who is no different than Romney, what you are saying is simply and obviously not true.
Romney opposes nationalizing health care (Obama’s Great Achievement), and he opposed the amnesty Obama and 33 other Democrat Senators voted for even after the political firestorm to stop it, and:
Obama
Romney
To say Romney is Just The Same As the Democrats is disingenuous, at best. It smells like an outright lie.
And, btw, what’s really irritating is that the Democrat apologists (and make no mistake, when you say they are No Worse Than Romney, you are giving Democrats a Big Pass …. Hiraghm even says he’ll vote for Obama) is how it forces me to appear to defend someone I do not support (I am not. I am refusing to let you give a pass to the Democrats, who are, as a group, far, far worse than Romney).
The country needs a Conservative with far more contrast to Dems than Mr. Romney in order to erase the disasterous policies set in place by this administration. That is the bottom line.
So he opposes one brand of government healthcare in favor of another brand: his own. He’s a healthcare meddler, like the Democrats. He’s squashy on a great many issues, like guns and abortion.
He’s also a Warmer, which is the impetus for the biggest liberty grab possibly in world history. All his talk of free-market economic principles that are referenced in your links are effectively nullified by this fact alone. What free-market can exist under an environmental belief that power-using activity is in-and-of-itself destructive and must be curtailed?
I’m not very interested in his talking points. I know he sounds more conservative than Democrats, but in any given election the Democrats sound more conservative than Democrats. While he continues to hold on to beliefs incompatible with liberty, he is no different than Democrats. He may have a different rhetoric, but that’s how I see it.
You refer to his talking points and his rhetoric, but you fail to see it cuts both ways.
He takes the position supporting the AGW idiocy because he sees it as politically advantageous, not because he believes in it. And then he turns and bashes EPA overregulation.
If you listen to what he actually says on the subject, he clearly means we need to cut down our dependence on fossil fuels (true dat), not that he actually believes the cult.
His position is similar to Gingrich’s. It would be similar to mine, if I was unaware of the necessity to attack the warmists as dangerous cultists and the warmists’ fantasy ‘science’ as crackpot dogma.
The guy is a snake and a deceiver. He’s not someone we should want as the representative of the conservative movement.
But if you truly believe the country would be in the same shape with the veto pen in Obama’s hand instead of in Romney’s hand ….. well, that’s just ignorance about politics, politicians and the political process.
Do you really not understand the vast chasm between what the states can do and what the federal government can do? Do you not understand how different (not the same) those two positions are?
So that makes them The Same? You clearly have intelligence, Mondamay. Please apply it.
It’s time consuming to research each vote or evens specific votes on destructive legislation pieces. Even more difficult to find where these politicians have spoken from both sides of their mouth. Always take notice of current high profile policies and laws which these “alleged” conservatives leave out of their speeches. I have family and family friends that continuously ask my opinion about specific Republican candidates. MM has a great archive of information which will inform each family or friend on topics they believe is important.
Too bad we don’t have a list of candidates with their pluses and minuses to clear up a lot of the unknowns. Basic graphs and titled images seem to have the most effect on uninformed voters.
On the issues is a reasonable basic resource.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm
Much of what they give is the way the person has actually voted. That can still be deceiving on any particular vote if they have voted in a way to give themselves political cover. That’s why you need to look at the big picture of the politician’s long term voting and behavior, too, in order to get an idea of how they’ll really vote and govern in the future.
Read through Obama’s record there. Anyone who cannot see that is different from Romney is being purposefully dense.
I think we need a leader at this point, not just a warm body. If Congress were giving me some indication that they understood the true scope of the spending problem and were serious about scaling it back, I might agree that Romney would work. As it is, someone has to have some drive and fire about doing the right thing, or it won’t happen.
There is more than just a constitutional argument against government healthcare; there is the simple question of whether it works, and is good for people. State level “solutions” may not be unconstitutional, but that doesn’t make them any better for citizens. IF this guy believed in the free-market as much as he claims, then the free-market would have been his solution.
ontheissues.org is incoherent. It makes mistakes to the point of meaninglessness.
They have Herman Cain’s statement:
“Life, liberty & pursuit of happiness starts with unborn life” listed as strong support for the proposition “Abortion is a woman’s right”.
They have Obama’s statement that “Bush erred in failing to renew assault weapons ban” as being strongly supportive of “the absolute right of gun ownership”.
There are tons of mistakes, and that’s just some of the stuff that jumped out at me.
We have a leader. His name is Barack Obama. When he is removed and a nonentity is put in his place, then conservative leaders can emerge in Congress, since Congress will then be able to actually do something about pushing back against Leviathan.
However, that is a situation I don’t want to see happen unless the alternative is a helpless, skewered Congress twitching on the end of Obama’s veto pen. I would rather have a conservative leader for President, too.
Rah, rah, Bachmann. Oops. Sorry. She supports ethanol requirements and farm subsidies, Just The Same As the Democrats. We can’t trust her, right?
We have a long way to go. People with voting records are on the record with how they really govern but there is that vote that is made to appease and curry favor when the outcome is a given.
People do play politics when they are in politics.
I’m guessing that he thought it was a right to work bill. In other words, he did not read the language of the legislation before voting on it. Something that others in that place seem to be afflicted with. Do we need a law that every piece of legislation must be thoroughly read before a vote is called? Somehow, I think they would produce a 2,000 page bill to do that, and it would be filled with glitches that would require the opposite of its original intent.
Perhaps. But if we look at the tendency of a candidate to sell out in the name of political expediency, I think Romney and McCotter are worse than Obama. Obama shoved healthcare through using methods that no Republican in recent memory would dare use to repeal it.
I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. The gist of the bill was setting off alarms all over the political spectrum. The media was talking about it, the bloggers were talking about it, and the unions were talking about it.
If he didn’t have time to read the bill, he should have asked a conservative how to vote.
There is nothing to ever be admired about a firm and unswerving commitment to evil.
Nauseating as the ethanol thing is to me (I have a rotary engine car, and it loses 20 to 30 mile per tank in mileage on 10% ethanol), it isn’t the camel’s nose in the tent that government healthcare is. That represents a lot of potential for very tight government control of personal and business behavior.
It is also more of a regional matter; hard for a congressman to balk at in a corn-producing state, but not political suicide for a president.
Same thing for Romney in MA. No way he could have politically survived there opposing any kind of substantial intrusion into health care, and now he faces having to say, “I did it for political reasons,” when he already suffers from the flip-flopper tag.
Bachmann is in a conservative district. Why didn’t she just lead?
They are all experienced politicians, and they have all learned that if you do not compromise with what your constituents want (even when what they want is nutty), and then smile like you like it, you’d be better off selling shoes instead.
If I have to settle for a President who will let individual States where the voters elect socialists screw over their dumbass citizens, instead of sticking with the one who wants to use the vast power of the federal government to screw us all, then so be it.
And if I have to settle for a President who won’t kill ethanol and farm subsidies, then, eh. She’d be the lesser of two evils, too.
Which is why I don’t like electing people from states like MA. I can’t tell if they are nutty, or just calculating.
On the plus side, I can be calculating, too. I voted for McCain with due consideration for his age.
That played into my calculations, too, though it was not a decisive consideration.
Not that I wished the guy ill, or anything. Just hoping he’d decide it was too much work, so why not let the nice lady veep take on more of the responsibilities and decision making?
He is a semi-regular guest on Red Eye on Fox News and he has a gift for off-the-cuff conversation that that combines surgically sharp wit with a dry hunor that would go well against The Teleprompter In Chief. He is one of the few hopefols that could, in his deceptively quiet monotone, totally rip Obama a new one in a debate with 10 seconds left on his clock without Obama even knowing he had been punked.
That’s not the only reason parties are bad. George Washington hated the idea of them, rightly thinking that they would hasten the degeneration of this country from a republic to a democracy. Unfortunately, the way our voting system works, two political parties of some kind are inevitable.
Bottom line: remember that delegates, particularly a lowly house reps, are frequently conditioned by the politics of their states. With candidates like Mitt Romney and Thad McCotter, perhaps a grain of salt is in order when evaluating their records. In states as blue as Massachusets and Michigan, it shouldn’t be surprising that the roots of politicians decisions occaisionally can be traced back to annoxia.
There is no backing away from card check.
We give latitude — a lot of latitude — for “misspeaks.” But casting a vote in Congress on a critical, highly-publicized issue is not something you can make go away with a Forrest Gump apology.
Nor am I impressed with the notion that you actually did know better but did it for political expediency.
Away from here, you fool.
I love when he is on Red Eye, despite the mayhem going on around him he manages to be witty while being able to stay above the fray. He is a class act. His chance of this going anywhere are slim to none, but I figure it is mostly to gain name recognition for later plans anyway. I agree, the more the merrier. If he admits supporting card check was a mistake, fine. I am amazed at the amount of support Romney has considering Romneycare and his refusal to admit it was a HUGE mistake.