Why Senators have a hard time getting elected

A lesson in how government works:

4 years ago, I remember people (the news media) talking about Kerry's label as a "flip-flopper" and how any Senator, who has been a senate member long enough, is going to end up, several times, voting in conflicting ways on a singular issue. This is because Bills up for vote are never simple things like "A bill to give money to starving orphans".

For example, a republican may propose a bill which does 8 things. Among them is "giving money to starving orphans" and "increasing military spending by 3%". So if you want to give money to starving orphans but don't want to increase military spending you choose which one you want to do more and then you vote Yea or Nay. Problem is, you're screwed either way if you're a Democrat who isn't supposed to want to increase military spending.

The democrats pull the exact same trick in their proposals, of course. That's just the awful way that law-making works in most countries.

So, recently, I saw this story which claims that McCain voted AGAINST making forensic rape exams free. Basically, when someone is raped, the police requires an exam to collect dna samples and other evidence for the crime in order to start an investigation. Prior to 1994, the victim payed for this exam with their own hard earned cash.

Horrible, right?

In 1994, HR 3355 came up in the Senate. From what I understand, within this bill, money was appropriated for rape exams such that the victims would no longer be required to pay for that exam out of their own pocket. And McCain voted Nay. He was among 37 others (2 dems and 36 reps) who voted against the bill. The bill required 50 Yaes in order to pass the Senate, and with the help of some other Republican senators it passed.

So why would McCain vote against a bill that made these rape exams free? Wouldn't we all agree that rape victims should certainly not be made to pay for this exam, no matter how cheap it may be?

Of course. I suspect that the reason why 38 republicans voted against this bill is because it wasn't the "free rape exams bill" but it was actually a much more far reaching, complicated bill to "amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to allow grants to increase police presence, to expand and improve cooperative efforts between law enforcement agencies and members of the community to address crime and disorder problems, and otherwise to enhance public safety."

This bill was generally going to provide more federal money for crime prevention programs (or possibly, it would force states to provide more money to these programs). The staunch republican view on bills such as these is "THIS IS A STATE ISSUE AND FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD NOT GO TO THESE PROGRAMS or THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD RESPECT THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATES TO RUN THEIR OWN PUBLIC SAFETY AFFAIRS"

Now, regardless of how we feel about that particular view point I think we must agree that even though McCain voted against this bill it isn't because he is pro-rape. It's probably because he adheres to the standard conservative view.

But guess what? Idiots are out there screaming "MCCAIN IS PRO-RAPE!" because of this Nay vote in August of 1994.

Is this fair? Is this an appropriate attack? I don't think so. I absolutely hate it when Republicans do it to Democrats and I absolutely hate it when Democrats do it to Republicans because it relies on manipulating an ignorant public. And it's impossible to defend these types of attacks because you can't really give the explanation I provided above as a 10 second sound byte. It's a boring explanation and no one has the patience or attention span to hear it.

So what happens next? McCain is pro-rape, Obama wants to teach sex education to Kindergartners and everyone is a big fat liar.

What's the solution? Voters need to wise up. When some reactionary liberal asks you a poll question like "how do you feel about McCain voting against free rape exams" you need to say "That sounds awful but I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for such a vote, and I'm going to www.senate.gov to find out exactly what's going on there".

If all voters responded like this to partisan pollsters (and followed through with it) then these baseless attacks would stop working and political groups (and Karl Rove) would stop using them.