This is Your Rep: Charlie Dent Edition

This one goes out to all you left leaning independents living in Middletown, Hershey, and Derry Township. 

Charlie Dent wants to be seen as a moderate Republican. A pragmatist surrounded by loons. It might even look that way unless you are paying close attention.

Dent represents PA's 15th congressional district. A sweeping district from the Lehigh Valley out Hershey and Middletown in our county.

He has made headlines since the beginning of the government shutdown trying to come off as a moderate, calling for a "clean" continuing resolution to fund the government. He was quoted on September 28th saying

"Let's see what the Senate sends back," said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) "If they send back another clean CR, I suspect -- again, I'm not making a decision on what's going to be on the floor -- a clean CR would likely to be on the floor at some point."

"I'm prepared to vote for a clean CR," he said. "I don't want the government to shut down." 

He definitely wanted to be seen as leading House Republicans back to sanity. Here is Vickers from the 15th.

A deal to end to the federal government shutdown may be in the offing, U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent said Tuesday. 

During an appearance on MSNBC's “Daily Rundown” this morning, the Allentown Republican said a GOP House conference deal to end the shutdown could be sent to the Senate today. 

The proposal would delay implementation of the medical device tax in the Affordable Care Act for two years, prevent members of Congress, all the White House staff from participating in the act's health care exchanges, and remove Senate language on a reinsurance tax.

We all know of course how this became an obvious dead end, but it also shows Dent's bad faith.

With the shutdown having gone on for weeks, Dent, while brandishing a claim to moderation, was no more active on the matter than anyone else in the House Republican Caucus; he was acting clearly in bad faith.

If Dent truly was concerned with the shutdown and its effects he would have signed the discharge petition when it was proposed. He didn't and the shutdown went on for 16 useless days. Geeting explains it best.

Charlie Dent is in lockstep with House Republicans on the goal of defunding Obamacare, repealing Obamacare, and replacing it with hand-waiving at capping damages in medical malpractice lawsuits and similarly ineffectual policies. 

He’s been called a moderate in the press recently because he publicly disagreed with a tactic – shutting down the government – House Republicans wanted to use to try to defund Obamacare. He correctly predicted that wouldn’t work to defund Obamacare. But he’s still for defunding Obamacare and replacing it with nothing even closely approximating universal insurance coverage. One wonders what he would’ve done had he judged the shutdown to be an effective tactical move.

Also, how can we forget that time he voted for H.R. 3 which redefined rape? 

This is Your Rep: Scott Perry Edition

This clip of Congressman Scott Perry (York-R) has been making the rounds recently

In it Perry compares repealing the ACA to repealing slavery, and denies that the government will shut down. He accuses Chris Matthews, the anchor of the program, and Congressional Democrats of not reading the legislation. Matthews took offense at the comment, taking it to its logical conclusion, that Matthews, a journalist, did not do his job. Matthews subsequently kicked Perry off the show. 

What this brief episode should make glaringly obvious to you and anyone who hears about it though, is that Perry is most certainly a right-wing extremist, a Tea Party Republican. 

Even though the freshman Rep. likes to affiliate himself with NoLables, a C4 organization focused on building bipartisanship there should be no surprises about Perry's policy goals. 

Perry conforms as a member of the House GOP's suicide caucus (as documented in this handy map from the Cook Political Report). Those who want Romney's agenda passed or they will shut down the government and possibly breach the debt ceiling.

A lot of Perry's insanity certainly has to do with the insanity of the way his district was gerrymandered after 2010. Perry is currently the congressman for the 4th congressional district. This is a district the until 2010 was actually on the PA/Ohio border. After the GOP redrew the district lines in 2010 the new 4th district includes all of York and Adams County, and only the city of Harrisburg from Dauphin County. This creates safer seats for all of the Dauphin County suburbs and rural areas that are more conservative than Harrisburg is.

Perry is also legitimately responding to the demands of these more conservative constituents. He has more than once been to Tea Party events and meetings. There is no question that the policy outcomes of what this small group of people wants would be detrimental to not only the almost 50,000 Dauphin County residents within his district but also the residents of the city of York, and really anyone who is not an independently wealthy doomsday prepper. 

If we want to push Perry and the very real threat of lasting Tea Party politics back then we need to organize to stop it. Even if it would be difficult to vote Perry out of office, we could make it easy for Perry to save face when he does not agree with all of the Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly watchers in his district by showing him that a sizable part of his constituency does not agree with them.