Mike! McGavick for Senate. NOT!

I know groups sell mailing lists. But since we give money to assorted progressive non-profits and activist groups, not to mention the Democrats, I gotta wonder how I got on the mailing list for Mike! McGavick, the Republican who's running for Senate against Maria Cantwell. (I'm also wondering what's with the ! after his name but to each his own).

I received a very amusing letter from Mr. Mike!, complete with an "issues survey" (read "push poll") and just had to play along. Push polls are a fascinating piece of writing. You must frame a question in such a way that the respondent has no choice but to side with you. For example, a push poll doesn't ask "If the election were held today would you be most likely to vote for George Bush or John Kerry?" It asks, "If the election were held today and John Kerry were a accused of eating his children would you be likely to vote for him?" This accomplishes two things: 1) a poll that necessarily favors Bush because no one is going to admit to voting for a child-eater and b) suggests to an undecided voter (with an obviously weak mind) that John Kerry might actually eat his children.

So anyway, I'm looking over this survey and it's got great questions that reduce complicated questions into simple 'yes' or 'no' constructs. And they just seemed so funny to me because of who was asking. 'Cause when a Republican asks "Should Americans be willing to give up more privacy and freedom if it makes us safer from terrorism?" a Democrat can't help but answer 'no' while adding "And the President should be impeached for spying on Americans without a warrant". I mean, he asked.

The question I think I liked best, though, was "What is a bigger threat to our future: economic uncertainty or low moral and ethical standards?" Those are my choices?

Let's see: jobs being outsourced, plants closing, unemployment hovering around 5%, pension funds going bust versus "Desperate Housewives" being a hit show. Yep, Mike!, I see what you're getting at. (I've always thought that if you think a movie or tv program is offensive then you just don't watch it. Silly me).

The accompanying literature made it clear, you see, that McGavick is the kind of Republican who really thinks most of our problems can be reduced to a lack of morality and that more government influence in these matters is the solution. Well, Lord knows that the GOP has done a particularly fine job of modelling this. I think of DeLay and Scooter, Frist and Abramoff...yep, a veritable pantheon of virtue. This is the party that should be dictating morality to the rest of us.

Plus I admire the obvious comedy of the former CEO of Safeco Insurance stating that consumers are partly responsible for spiraling health care costs because we go along with it when our docs order "unnecessary tests". Seriously. (Pesky ol' mammograms). This from a guy who made $3 million last year plus $4.5 million in stock and stuff. Oh, and the company also pays $1.8 million a year for naming rights to our baseball stadium. Apparently things like that don't impact insurance costs.

McGavick strikes me as a perfectly decent rich guy who lives in a tidy little world where everything is black and white and where all our problems would be easily solved if we would just trust nice, decent rich guys to tell us what we need and don't need. Which is one way of looking at the world, to be sure. But that's not really my recipe for good governance. I'll be sticking with the Cantwell ticket, Mr. McGavick, but hey, love the baseball stadium. Good luck with that ! thing.