Have you called your Congressional representatives about the shutdown/default mess?
I have a right-wing Republican representative, and I’ve tried calling his DC office a couple of times, but I get flustered and end up making pretty short calls. Today I finally said what I should have said before: I’m your constituent, and I wanted the Medicare expansion, and I’m for Obamacare. We don’t need to stop Obamacare, we need to stop the default.
You may disagree with me on the policy, but I’m curious: Who’s been calling their representatives?
I learned at the knee of my father, who was a behind the scenes sort of guy in politics that calls and speaking to in person are easy to ignore … letters get logged in and sort of hang about [especially if you have a cc: list of other people at the bottom.]
I have expressed my displeasure at how the whole mess has progressed, and that I was a very long time Republican supporter, and if the party did not start moving back to its roots I would be changing to a party that more completely reflected my political stance.
[I also bitched with our selectman at the grocery store in line as we are both similar in viewpoints and we had nothing better to do.]
And yes, I sent all the critters tailored to how they voted. Every letter to a Republican went to at least one other Republican, a Democrat and to both the current independents [though they only got one letter each, I considered that enough, I didn’t need to mail-deluge them.]
I answered no on this one, but I have contacted various people in the past. This particular crisis is just a symptom of the ongoing problem.
The other problem for me is that I’m in a Democratic controlled state and usually vote Republican. So my representatives aren’t the primary cause of the current problem, and they’re not exactly going to win my vote in the future, regardless of what they do now.
Our senators are staunch (and vocal) liberals, while our House member is a very conservative Republican. He has robocalled us several times to fill us in on his refusal to deal with the Dems, so we haven’t bothered to contact him. He already knows from previous communications that we will work to oust him from office. We got closer than ever last time, so maybe this time even my Republican farmer neighbors will see the light.
I’ve never done this before, and I am ashamed of that fact. The only excuse I have is that I’m afraid of confrontation or making a fool of myself when I call. Which is funny because I imagine they get some pretty moronic calls. But yeah, not knowing what to do or say, it’s difficult.
My Rep is a country club Repub (my parents have met him on at least one occasion) who has decided to align himself with the TP’ers so as to hang onto his seat (pretty easy anyway when there’s no Dem candidate to run against him like there wasn’t this past election). No way anything I say could possibly influence his mind, assuming he isn’t out on the golf course at the time…
I didn’t call my representative (who is a Republican, not 100% tea party, but pretty damn close) but I did write him an email. I received back a really infuriating form email telling me how much he understood we all hate Obamacare and he will continue to fight to get rid of it. :rolleyes:
Annoying, since my entire letter was about how I personally have benefited from Obamacare and urging him to come up with something better if he truly was against it rather than defunding it and putting nothing in its place.
Really, I barely see the point of talking to these guys because they don’t listen to a damn thing, but I keep writing them emails, just so I can say I did something.
I emailed and called (got a recording) and even started a GQ!
There was no poll answer here, but the gist of my contact was that independent of their opinion of Obamacare, it was imprudent to negotiate under the thread of a continued shutdown/default. Most of my reps are Democrats, but my congressperson is an ostensibly moderate Republican.
I’m from MA and have generally been happy with my elected officials. They appear to be on the job so I haven’t felt need to call them. If they were failing to do thier job like their counterparts across the isle they’d hear from me.
