This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 3, 2012 - HANNIBAL -- U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., dropped her prepared speech today to challenge instead her Republican rivals to disavow remarks by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, in which he referred to a young woman law student as a "slut" and "prostitute" because she had testified in favor of free coverage of contraceptives.
“Why haven’t Sarah Steelman or John Brunner or Todd Akin stood up and said, ‘This is not how we treat young women in this country who want to exercise their First Amendment Rights?’ ” McCaskill asked in a brunch address to hundreds of party faithful attending the regional Democrat Days this weekend in Hannibal.
“Why aren’t they calling on Rush Limbaugh to apologize?” she continued, touching off extended applause when she added, “I am today. Apologize, Rush Limbaugh!”
(Later Saturday, Limbaugh did issue an apology to the student for his choice of words.)
About the same time, McCaskill’s campaign was sending out emailed requests for donations and taking note that Limbaugh had called the senator a “commie babe liberal.”
McCaskill’s address, along with equally sharp remarks by Attorney General Chris Koster, appeared to demonstrate that Missouri’s Democratic ticket this fall would not ignore the repeated and sustained GOP attacks already underway.
Koster, for example, drew applause when he declared that his Republican rivals – notably St. Louisan Ed Martin – lack experience and seek to turn the state’s top law-enforcement into “a soapbox for social issues.”
Koster also defended Gov. Jay Nixon’s decision to use some of the state’s mortgage-lawsuit settlement to restore earlier cuts to public colleges and universities, by quipping that he wanted to “apologize to our Republican friends for creating so many ‘snobs.’ ”
Koster’s comment was a jab at Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum who called President Barack Obama a “snob” for encouraging young people to get a college education.
McCaskill defends federal stimulus spending
But it was McCaskill who brought the Democrat Days crowd to their feet when she introduced herself as “Claire the Warrior.”
McCaskill’s unscripted address represented her most aggressive push-back against her critics, a surprised aide said, taking note of the senator’s unexpected, and detailed, defense of the federal stimulus spending – which has been under attack for months.
McCaskill ticked off a series of stimulus items that she said had kept the nation, especially rural Missouri, from sliding into an economic free-fall.
The $4 billion given to the state of Missouri allowed it to balance its budgets for three years without forcing the layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers and other public employees, McCaskill said.
She then zeroed in on the federal assistance to General Motors and Chrysler, which were close to bankruptcy in 2009 but now are in the black.
“That new Chevy pickup? Stimulus. That second (GM) shift at Wentzville? Stimulus. That billion-dollar investment that we had of the Ford plant in Kansas City? Stimulus.”
McCaskill continued, “We thought those American jobs, that ‘Made in the America’ label, we thought that was worth saving.”
To her Republican opponents and the GOP candidates for president, she added, “That was an evil bailout.”
McCaskill also took note of the audience’s strong agricultural bent.
“Last year was the best year for farm income in this country for the last 50 years,” she continued. “One of my favorite things to do in town hall meetings in rural Missouri, when they start getting a little feisty … about the evils of the federal government. I love looking out in the crowd and asking, ‘How many people in this room got a check from the federal government?’ ”
Rural Missouri continues rightward march
Her rhetorical question was an acknowledgement of what many rural Democratic activists know well: Rural Missouri leans right.
Democrat Days is an unusual political event because it is held in a part of the state that has been shifting Republican for at least 30 years.
The state Republican Party's annual Lincoln Days festivities, which floats among Missouri's major regions, is a decidedly statewide event.
Democrat Days, in contrast, is a regional affair. It gets attention because it is the first of a series of regional Democratic gatherings held around the state.
Former state Auditor Susan Montee, who's now running for lieutenant governor, said Democrat Days "is important to us as Democrats, to kick off the year, to show excitement, to show that we're not 'alone out there.' "
Montee was among several candidates who observed that the event also helps them gauge how rural voters are viewing the political field in both parties.
Missouri Democratic candidates for statewide office have gotten used to not carrying rural turf. What is crucial, though, is for Democratic candidates to carry close to 45 percent of the rural vote, and then amass huge margins among friendlier voters in urban and suburban areas.
Farmer Richard Webber, the retired presiding commissioner of Audrain County, said the rural preference for the GOP -- at least on national and statewide races -- has not waned. He continues to hear loud complaints from fellow farmers about taxes and government spending, even though he agrees with the senator that economic times for agriculture couldn’t be better.
Webber, 69, said he’s paying a lower tax rate than he was when he first starting farming 50 years ago.
He and others cited rural opposition to “big government’’ and suspicions about global warming, science and higher education.
Bill Fennewald, who operates a water-well business in northern Missouri, said the social issues continue to resonate with rural voters, prompting them to ignore constructive Democratic programs – and overlook disliked Republican proposals, such as those that would trim Medicare and Social Security.
Tracy Smith, the Shelby County clerk, said that people talk most often about “jobs and the economy,’’ then get distracted when “somebody throws out the wedge issues.”
Fennewald observed drily: “Some people brush their teeth with gunpowder in the morning and then shoot their mouth off.”
McCaskill’s best hope for winning rural votes, said Webber, could well lie with her well-published efforts to help military veterans.
Democrat Days’ co-chairman John Yancey, a former mayor of Hannibal, lamented that he hasn’t seen much shift in sentiment among rural voters who have left the Democratic fold.
He said the political climate was far different – but already beginning to change -- when he first moved to Hannibal 51 years ago. Northern Missouri in 1961 was still solidly Democratic, he said.
Yancey recalled an old joke at the time about neighboring Ralls County running out of GOP ballots during a primary. Election officials allegedly said, “We never needed more than a half-dozen Republican ballots before.”
That’s certainly not the case now, as rural Republicans have a strong grip on congressional and many legislative offices. Only a handful of legislative posts and county offices are still held by some Democrats, although that edge is even waning, several Democratic Days attendees privately observed.
Most rural Missouri counties haven’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1996. And even party loyalists like Yancey and Webber suspect that President Barack Obama’s support in rural Missouri remains low.
That backdrop helps explain why McCaskill’s tough talk was so well received by her rural Democratic audience, some of whom say they often feel isolated among neighbors, friends and coworkers.
McCaskill promised to the Saturday crowd that she would fight for rural issues -– such as keeping open small-town post offices targeted for closing -– “from the moment that the sun comes up.”
