Wall Street Journal - October 3, 2008
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Connecticut's Chris Shays, the last surviving GOP congressman from New England and a "yes" vote for Monday's massively unpopular bailout bill, is being hammered on the air over the financial crisis -- for ignoring it.
Ads financed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have been comparing him to John McCain for suggesting the economy is "fundamentally strong" and attacking him for having supported investing worker retirement savings in the stock market. On the stump, his Democratic opponent, Jim Himes, has repeatedly accused him of not taking the credit meltdown seriously enough.
Because of all this, it won't be so easy now to turn on a dime and flay Mr. Shays for his bailout vote. Mr. Himes, a former Goldman Sachs executive, has been vague on whether he supports the bill himself, instead calling for "protection" of taxpayers. And Connecticut is not the only House race where bailout politics may be more complex than it first appears.
Phone calls to Capitol Hill continue to run against the bailout, but there appears to be a cleavage within the "no" camp. Nearly half the California delegation voted against the bill, but the "no" vote came mainly from districts neighboring those with the highest foreclosure rates -- i.e. districts where voters may well see subprime borrowers and their Wall Street enablers as all part of the same problem. Yet we also hear that many of the "no" calls to Congress come from troubled homeowners themselves, who oppose the bailout only because they want more money directed at themselves. Five of seven representatives from Central Florida -- the nation's other big subprime hotzone -- voted against the bailout.
Perhaps even more surprising, some of the strongest support for the bailout came from states where the foreclosure uptick hasn't been extreme. Connecticut's entire delegation joined Mr. Shays in backing the bill, with the exception of freshman Democrat Rep. Joe Courtney.
So the taxpayers-vs.-Wall Street storyline may not tell the whole story. Many voters at least seem to recognize that Wall Street-plus-irresponsible homeowners created the problem -- and support a bailout to protect themselves from spillover of subprime disasters created elsewhere.
Original Article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122298894357500213.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Paid for and authorized by the Christopher Shays for Congress Committee, Ralph DePanfilis, Treasurer
Christopher Shays for Congress | 98 East Avenue | Norwalk, CT 06851
p: 203/853-7429 or 866/619-7429 (toll free) | f: 203/853-7403
© 2008 Shays for Congress
powered by eNilsson
