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Alan Grayson: The Democrats’ John LeBoutillier (on steroids)

October 29, 2009 by B. Daniel Blatt

Back in the Republican landslide of 1980, GOP candidates across the nation, riding the Gipper’s coattails, swept many entrenched Democrats out of office, including Indiana’s John Brademas, then the House Democratic Whip, Al Ullman, then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and long-time Democratic Senators like Washington State’s Warren Magnuson, then the senior member of the United States Senate (having first taken office in 1944), and other Senate powerhouses including Indiana’s Birch Bayh, Wisconsin’s Gaylord Nelson and South Dakota’s George McGovern.

In New York, eight-term Congressman Lester L. Wolf lost his Long Island seat to a man 34 years his junior, 27-year-old John LeBoutillier, just one year out of Harvard Business School. The Republican became “the youngest member of the 97th Congress,” and certainly acted like it. He regularly engaged in ad hominem attacks not just on Democrats, but also on his fellow Republicans, calling Charles Percy, the then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “a living disaster with almost no redeeming features.”

He reserved the better part of his rancor for then-House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, famously opening one speech with the line, “Tip O’Neill and the federal government are the same: they’re both big, fat and out of control.”

His juvenile attacks earned him the admiration of many young conservatives, but did not help him with his Long Island constituents.  In 1982, he lost his seat in the Republican-leaning district to Robert Mrazek.

Such, I believe, will be the fate of the man who, in the current Congress, most resembles John LeBoutillier.  Elected in 2008 as part of the Obama landslide in Florida’s Orange County (where nearly two-thirds of his constituents reside), Rep. Alan Grayson has engaged in rhetorical attacks on his Republican colleagues that make Leboutillier’s accusations seem tame by comparison.

Like that one-term Republican Congressman, Grayson has not limited his attacks to his partisan adversaries.  He has called a female lobbyist a “K Street whore.”  And let’s not forget the venom with which he has attacked Republicans, saying their health care plan is based on the notion that they want people to “die quickly.”  He has said former Vice President Dick Cheney has “blood that drips from his teeth“.

Such rhetoric may endear Grayson to the far left Democratic base, just as LeBoutillier’s rhetoric endeared him to many conservative activists in the early 1980s.  But, it offends many voters, even those who might otherwise share his politics.

There’s a reason that, nearly thirty years after Leboutillier’s election, only political junkies know who the man was.  So will it be ten years hence with Alan Grayson, a soon-to-be one-term Congressman, distinguished only by his rhetorical excess.

Filed Under: 2008 Congressional Elections, 2010 Elections, American History, Congress (111th), Mean-spirited leftists

Comments

  1. Sonicfrog says

    October 29, 2009 at 5:41 pm - October 29, 2009

    Actually, I have no problem with the “K Street Whore” comment. I’ve used the whore term to describe leaches of all type. And is it that much worse than calling someone a “welfare queen”? I know “queen” is different than “whore”, but the intent of the slang is the same.

  2. heliotrope says

    October 29, 2009 at 6:28 pm - October 29, 2009

    Huh? Am I to believe any woman in civil America can be called a “whore” and she will laugh it off if the context clarifies that she is bending principles for greed? Really?

    Nearly every politician I know “whores” for votes. But should I assume that Madam Speaker would look kindly on being called Madam Speaker-whore?

  3. American Elephant says

    October 29, 2009 at 6:36 pm - October 29, 2009

    “Madam Speaker Whore” Hmm, has a nice ring to it. The ring of truth perhaps?

    But I wouldn’t want any of my representatives calling her that. They can leave that to me.

  4. jax dancer says

    October 29, 2009 at 6:37 pm - October 29, 2009

    Isn’t “Madame” the one who controls the whores in a brothel? Is there any better analogy to describe congress?!?

    And speaking of pork whores, “Corrine Delivers!” who am I to complain about my congresswhore. . .

  5. ThatGayConservative says

    October 29, 2009 at 6:53 pm - October 29, 2009

    Grayson’s a disgraceful back-bencher who does whatever he can to get on TV, as long as they don’t ask questions:

    http://tinyurl.com/yhm94on

    http://tinyurl.com/cbvdff

    He brought his kids to a town hall meeting over the summer, supposedly so they could “see democracy in action” but really it was so he could hide behind them if things got a little hot. I wonder if he tells his kids that he called a woman a “whore” and the ADL a “crazy racist hate-group”.

    A gay couple were having their home foreclosed, so they asked Grayson for help. He showed up with cameras and after the photo-op, he split the scene and the couple got kicked out of their home.

    Damn glad I don’t live with the kooks next-door in Orange Co. Thank God for Rep. Putnam!

  6. John says

    October 30, 2009 at 10:00 am - October 30, 2009

    I guess I’m old enough now to talk about “back in my day…”. Anyways, Grayson is what we would have called a “punk”. This is one punk that definitely needs to go.

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