As predicted, the petition drive by Michigan teabaggers to stop 32 million Americans with no health care insurance from getting it by placing a constitutional amendment on the ballot to exempt Michigan from the historic health insurance reform law failed, but we only found out on Tuesday how miserably it failed.
The teabaggers held a “press conference” yesterday on the Capitol steps, and organizer and Howell School Board member and founder of the anti-gay hate group “LOVE” Wendy Day said the group got only 145,000-170,000 signatures. That’s well short of the more than 381,000 valid signatures required to place it on the ballot in November. That’s less than half the required signatures. That illustrates how really weak the so-called “teabaggers” are, and it’s all just a fringe group screaming hate at the top of their lungs.
But Day’s quote in the Detroit Free Press article is just priceless.
“We didn’t fail. We just didn’t succeed enough.”
This is Day’s second failed petition drive in less than a year, and last year she failed in an attempt to recall three of her four school board colleagues who voted to fire the former district Superintendent.
Day’s spin was a far cry from last March when she launched her doomed campaign at an illegal rally at the Howell Freshman Campus when she said “Go to one tea party; go to two. We can get plenty of signatures. The tea party express is coming through.”
Those of us who live in Howell hope Day’s embarrassing 15 minutes of fame are up, but I doubt that will happen. Even her fellow teabaggers know what a media hound she is.
As I said in the past, the petition drive was just an exercise to build a Republican mailing list of supporters, and some of Day’s fellow teabaggers recognize that. We actually have no idea how many signatures were actually collected because no petitions were actually turned in to the Secretary of State. Fellow “tea party” organizer Joan Fabiano had this to say about it in an email published on a rightwing blog.
“All data collected is the property of Wendy Day, (State Rep.) Tom McMillian (sic) (R-Rochester Hills) and shared with the Republican Party and who knows who else Fair Taxers? No data is shared because the petitions were not turned in and made public.”
McMillin and Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, both said in subscription only Gongwer that they would introduce legislation that would allow Michigan residents to opt out of the federal health care law, as the constitutional amendment on the petitions would have done.
I’m not sure what effect or weight a law will have. Kuipers, who is running for U.S. Congress in the seat vacated by “Twitter” Pete Hoekstra, introduced Senate Joint Resolution K last March to place the same constitutional amendment on the ballot that teabaggers were seeking. It failed to get the necessary two-third vote to pass.
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