UPDATE: Cong. Joe Wilson’s Opponent Rob Miller Raises Over $700,000 After Wilson Outburst
Last night during the President's speech on health reform, the now-infamous Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted "You lie" as the President outlined his priorities for the legislation he hopes to pass this Congress...an act that is unheard of. He is now paying the price. His opponent for office, Rob Miller, has raised over half a million dollars in the past 24 hours alone.
UPDATE: 5:36 AM, Friday September 11th:
ActBlue reports that Congressman Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) opponent, Rob Miller, has raised over 700,000 dollars from roughly 20,000 individual contributors since the President’s speech to both Houses of Congress on Wednesday night, when Wilson interuppted the speech to shout "You lie."
ActBlue lists more than 50 different funds collecting money on behalf of Miller.
Original story:
Last night during the President’s speech on health reform, the now-infamous Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted "You lie" as the President outlined his priorities for the legislation he hopes to pass this Congress. Coming from a party not known for its veracity, this act might have simply been yet another entry into the annals of Republican audacity. The New York Daily News, for example, quipped:
First, the GOP had Joe the Plumber, now it has Joe the Heckler.
But calling the President of the United States a liar during an address to both Houses of Congress is unheard of and goes well beyond the pale.
And Wilson is now paying the price.
His opponent for office, Rob Miller, has raised over half a million dollars in the past 24 hours alone.
Miller ran against Wilson in the last election and won 46 percent of the vote. He is remounting a challenge for the 2010 election that appears to have been given a big boost by Wilson himself.
Wilson is a hard-core conservative (in poiltical beliefs, if not manners).
- His voting record is rated as "anti public health" by the American Public Health Association.
- He voted against putting mental health on par with physical health, against requiring Medicare to negotiate for drug prices, and for limiting drug prescription benefits for Medicare recipients.
- He voted to "limit anti-trust lawsuits on health plans and insurers" in March 2008.
- In July 2006 Wilson voted to constitutionally define marriage as between one man and one woman.
- In December 2005 Wilson voted to make the PATRIOT Act permanent.
- In September 2004 he voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
national Democrats as a social conservative and critic of the Bush
administration. During that campaign, he blogged for the Huffington Post about his reasons for running:
I never thought I would run for Congress — or feel like I
had to. I have always thought of myself as a Marine. I started thinking
that way not long after my father died when I was 14 years old. Since I
enlisted at the age of 20, the Marine Corps has been my extended family
and I couldn’t imagine that would ever change.
But it did after my second tour of duty in Iraq — where I
fought to maintain the peace, but also to enable Iraqis to build better
schools, improved hospitals, to help create jobs and, where possible, a
stable economy and civil society.
When I returned home to my wife and six year old son, I saw that the
politicians in Washington were not fighting for these same things at
home. Worse, the congressman who represented the second district where
I live — Rep. Joe Wilson — was part of that elite circle of George
Bush loyalists who chose to enact a radical agenda, never mind the
lives and wellbeing of the constituents he was pledged to represent.