Reports from the Outer Rim

I was asked why I call the Congress the "Outer Rim". It's because Congress seems so out of touch with the electorate, at least many of the established Senators and Representatives. Elected cycle after cycle they get feeling as if they are invincible from the electorate, accountable to the politically active only. If they can bring home that government pork, say platitudes during election cycles, and pacify those folks who write thier Congressmen then what they say in Washington doesn't really matter to those folks who only pay attention every four years, or even every two.

When I was a girl, I asked my father why a great many people who didn't like the man voted for Bob Packwood, then a Senator from Oregon where I grew up. "Well Sweetie," he replied, "he's got clout and seniority, people think he can make a deal in Washington for folks back here. They don't want to have a Senator who has to earn it." Packwood resigned after the Ethics Committee recommended it, having been exposed as a drunk who groped his interns.
That's it in a nutshell. A good many senior politicians think that government pork and platitudes is enough to appease voters, sadly they are right, for the moment.

There are somethings though that election time platitudes and government pork can't gloss, especially if anal retentive bloggers with long memories keep bringing up. Chances are that the general populace wouldn't remember Dana Milbank's story about House Democrats and thier make believe, or Howard Dean's Cornucopia of Idiotic Assertions. Political junkies do and now they have a broader voice. They will bring up these folks entertaining Jewish conspiracy theories (two links), calling our soldiers Nazis, and other such outrageous behavior during all the election cycles.

Patterico thinks that the trend of the Democratic politicians in Washinton and the voter fraud perpetrated to aid democratic politicians, is indicitive of banana republic shennanigans culminating in a coup. I think it is simply an indication that they hold voters in contempt, that they still don't understand a wider audience is watching, and that they can buy thier way out lies and bigotry with money for highways and whatever else they can bring home.