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Remember Dale Jackson, the Rush Limbaugh of Huntsville of whom I have not spoken since the Huntsville Tea Party? I’d hoped to ignore him forever, but Parker Griffith’s Christmas present to Alabama Democrats has caused a furor in the state party system — and suddenly forced me to pay attention:

I love the fact that Parker Griffith conservative Democrat got nonegative press but now that he is a Republican the Huntsville Times feels free to finally start covering how inconsitent he is.

After saying he wouldn’t necessarily lose his committee assignments because Democrats wouldn’t want to appear “small and punitive,” he officially resigned and was removed from the Small Business, Transportation and Infracture, and Science and Technology committees, read by the clerk on the floor of Congress.

[...]

Meanwhile, the question of whether polling data swayed Griffith’s decision was also muddled. Griffith said Wednesday that his office hadn’t sponsored a poll to gauge his electability as a Democrat, nor did he commission anyone else.

“I didn’t see any numbers,” Griffith said.

That contradicts a report in Congressional Quarterly that said Griffith’s office confirmed Wednesday that he did comission a poll, though “he declined to release the specific polling questions or the restults of the survey.”

This just in: Parker Griffith has no integrity.

So my representative in Washington is switching from the Democratic Party to the Republicans? Shock!

I am SHOCKED, I say, that a man who pandered to teabaggers at health care town halls with Soylent Green death panels and immigration hysteria, openly advocated removing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and who boasts an impressive seven percent progressive rating versus a mere 33% conservative rating, has turned coat. Whodathunkit?

With Griffith, disingenuous politics are a given. He’s cut from the George Wallace mold. He can’t even be honest about his reasons: speaking to POLITICO, Griffith made the case that Obama’s cancellation of a missile shield was his proximate cause for the switch. Sure, the strategic choice of a sea-based system closer to Iran did take contracts away from Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, at the center of his district, and direct them to other states. But that was in September — why do this now?

More likely is the explanation that Griffith has never actually been a Democrat. He voted against the Lily Ledbetter Act, every version of health care reform, and the stimulus bill, while actively working against the union workers who put him over the top.

If the man is starting to sound like a closet Republican finally going home, then you’re getting the picture.

Griffith’s latest move is all about cutting off his right flank. He’s a first-term representative elected by a razor-thin margin over Republican Wayne Parker, a wingnut among wingnuts who (rumor has it) will run again.* In becoming the GOP incumbent, Griffith hopes to cut off his main opponent and face an empty Democratic field.

But good luck with that strategy in the age of Teabag Terror. Red State’s Eric Erickson has already declared him persona non grata:

We should now hope him [sic] be an extremely endangered Republican in a primary. We will not fix the GOP’s problems if we keep allowing people who are not one of us to suddenly switch the letter next to their name and magically become one of us.

How ironic, how deeply delicious, would it be to see Griffith embrace the Teabag Terror only to get crushed? That vision is all the sweeter when you realize that Griffith’s politics have never been those of a Democrat or even a Republican.

Griffith has always been about Griffith.

It’s in the way this oncologist speaks of tort reform as a magic silver bullet to solve the health care crisis. It’s plainly etched in the career path of a doctor who made his sizable fortune by embracing the trend towards patients-as-profit-centers. It’s in the spectacle of Griffith throwing red meat at Norton Auditorium in August.

It’s in his embrace of the party that paid for this disgusting ad used against him (h/t to GottaLaff):

Anyone who would want to belong to that kind of politics is not a Democrat or even a Blue Dog, but a self-serving hypocrite. Alabama progressives are actually better off without him, and that’s sad.

*UPDATE: Apparently my information on other GOP candidates is out-of-date. From POLITICO:

Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks will be remaining in the race, according to his campaign manager Bruce Tucker, who called Griffith’s party switch “a desperate political move.”

Also, the Rush Limbaugh of Huntsville has spoken:

“He’s a liar. Michael Steele should be ashamed of himself. The NRCC should be ashamed of itself for not coming out and immediately repudiating this guy. He was unacceptable a year ago and he’s acceptable now? A year ago, they were saying this guy was a murderer.”

Teabaggers are so predictable. Too bad Griffith couldn’t predict their rejection.

I’m in the market for a Yugo. At the town hall I covered last night, Dr. Tom Ott stood at the microphone to make this remark:

(He) spoke of his wife, Margaret, who died in the 1980s of breast cancer and asked Griffith if the bill that does pass would prevent others from getting the care they needed.

“Margaret was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978, and she received state-of-the-art care and lived 10 years more to raise our two children,” he said. “The health care we have is better than what we realize. I like to think of it as a Mercedes with a bad transmission. The president wants to put us in a Yugo, but I’d like to see us fix the transmission. With this bill, would future Margarets die and be unable to raise their children?”

My father is a colleague of Ott’s, and I remember Margaret’s brave battle with cancer. She was lucky: too many Americans find out halfway through cancer treatment that their lifetime coverage limits have been exceeded, and they are now paying out-of-pocket. Others suffer “rescission” of their policies just as they really need them. Present-day Margarets are already dying and unable to raise their children, thanks to the tender mercies of free-market health care.

Moreover, no one is trying to fit Tom Ott for a Yugo. Indeed, one of the primary features of H.R. 3200 is that it doesn’t force anyone to buy into a public option. Dr. Ott can keep his Mercedes.

In fact, the insurance regulations in H.R. 3200 will exert some measure of quality-control so the Mercedes doesn’t fall apart at 80 m.p.h. and kill him. Reform will also keep his “car payments” from breaking the bank; without reform, in a decade no one will be able to afford health insurance.

Meanwhile, a public option will give access to everyone who doesn’t have health care. There are about 47 million Americans who’d gladly take the Yugo; indeed, tens of millions are desperately trying to get someone, anyone to sell them a health care policy.

Griffith himself tried to channel this reality last night when he remarked that 600,000 Alabamians “go to work and do everything we ask them to do, but can’t get health insurance.” You absolutely DO NOT have to become an unemployed couch potato to lack insurance. In fact, the hardest-working Americans are the least likely to have insurance. Convenience store cashiers have one of the most dangerous jobs in America, but almost none have health insurance.

The deficit hawks who cheered last night should also understand that reform without a public option amounts to a new, gigantic insurance and drug industry bailout:

(I)t’s the only thing that can keep costs low and thus prevent this bill from being nothing more than a glorified bailout of the insurance and drug industries, which is exactly what will happen if 50 million people are forced by law to buy their products with no cost-control mechanism but ample government subsidies.

I like Tom Ott. I sympathize with his loss and respect his career. But his comment is zero-sum, screw-you, I’ve-got-mine Republicanism of Teh Stupid™ kind.

Before a packed Norton Auditorium on the campus of the University of North Alabama, Griffith expressed his concern that illegal aliens would be eligible for the public option in H.R. 3200 — a long dismissed falsehood.

The first-term congressman later spoke of closing off the Mexican border. Over the course of the town hall, he made a series of such statements, each time winning the audience’s agreement.

The wolves’ hunger satisfied, Griffith won their attention with the story of a patient’s three year losing battle with stage 3 breast cancer.

The patient had waited too long to seek treatment because she lacked health insurance.

Griffith then explained the health insurance exchange. Foisting the House legislation in the air, he drew applause and laughter when he remarked that it weighed forty pounds.

Griffith drew enthusiastic agreement when he said he was against cutting Medicare spending to pay for the public option, another long-debunked rumor.

Griffith raised the red herring issue of tort reform, claiming that doctors’ practice of defensive medicine drives up costs.

Griffith had a personal complaint: H.R. 3200, he said, would do nothing to help end the shortage of doctors and nurses in Alabama, for which he blamed the priorities of state universities.

Griffith continued to muddy the waters. “We don’t want this to be like Waxman-Markey,” he said, referring to the ‘Cap & Trade’ legislation that barely passed the House in June. There was raucous applause.

Mention of the public option filled the room with boos. When Parker responded that he would not support a public option, there was another round of heavy applause.

Griffith was able to keep control of the crowd during his opening remarks. He responded to an attempted hijacking from the front rows by picking up the thread. “Thank you, I was making that point,” he said.

Griffith then admitted the scope of the health care crisis in Alabama: our population is 4.6 million, of whom 700,000 are on Medicare and 1.6 million on Medicaid. “Six hundred thousand Alabamians have no health insurance,” he said. “We have to extend it to them.”

Calling on the audience’s Judeo-Christian ethic, he inspired one questioner a half-hour later to remark on her offense at being preached to. Griffith did not debunk her “death panels” question, choosing instead to claim that offering end-of-life counseling “could become a standard for treatment. That needs to be clarified,” he said. Or, better yet, removed altogether. There was another round of applause.

Above all, Griffith’s fiscal restraint was the most popular theme, both in the audience and among questioners. “The less government is involved in health care, the better we’re going to be,” he said, opening the floor to questions.

During questions, Griffith complained that lifestyle choices accounted for the largest costs in Medicare spending. He made no mention of the prevention and wellness provisions of the bill.

Questioners began to ramble: would Griffith support term limits for Congress? “At my age, absolutely,” he replied.

The most thunderous applause of the night came when a woman claimed that H.R. 3200 was a government power-grab and the bill should be “trashed.”

Cross-posted at Left in Alabama