Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is a freshman from Orlando. He’s probably most well known in the blogosphere for hiring Matt Stoller to serve on his staff. His district is highly competitive but I believe he joined the Progressive Caucus and he’s made it a habit to use his seat on the Financial Services committee to ask uncomfortable questions. He’s basically violating every rule the consultants have written about how to get reelected as a Freshman from a competitive seat. That’s good, because we’ll get to find out if you can be aggressively partisan in a swing-district and get away with it. Yesterday, he took to the House floor with some giant charts and said that the Republicans health care plan was ‘don’t get sick’ and if you do, you should ‘die quickly’ in order to save the insurance companies money. Over the top? Yeah, a bit. The Village is horrified.
Personally, I think Grayson should adjust his message slightly. I like his aggressiveness. I like the substance of what he’s saying. But he’s probably making himself more a lightning rod than he needs to to get his message across. He’s putting his seat at risk. That’s good and bad. It’s good that he’s willing to lose and unafraid to stick up for people in need. But there might be a degree of recklessness involved, too, that isn’t necessary.
I hope the people from his district reward him for his honesty. But, if they don’t, at least he will have provided some seriously good entertainment.
