No Republicans

President Obama demonstrated his willingness to reach across the aisle by going to the House Republican Caucus - not the House Democratic Caucus - to answer their questions about the Stimulus bill. So how did they repay his generosity? By unanimously voting NO.

After enthusiastically helping George Bush create this deep economic Recession, they unanimously refuse to help President Obama prevent a Depression.

Bi-partisanship? Post-partisanship? Fuggedaboutit. The Republicans are the party of NO.

That means the only way to save our economy is to have No Republicans.

In 2008, Democrats challenged incumbent Republicans in nearly every Congressional District. In 2010, let's aim higher - let's challenge every Republican. And on Election Day 2010, let's sweep all Republicans out of Congress.

Here is a plan. Hopefully we can get the support of Netroots groups like Blue America, Bold Progressives, Color of Change, Democracy For America, Living Liberally, Moveon, Progressive Democrats of America, and True Majority, as well as blogs like AmericaBlog, CrooksAndLiars, DailyKos, DemocraticUnderground, Eschaton, FireDogLake, HuffingtonPost, Hullabaloo, MyDD, OpenLeft, TalkingPointsMemo, etc.

1. Let's form a Progressive Caucus in every Congressional District.

• Create a group on my.barackobama.com called "No Firstname Lastname" (for example No John Boehner), so activists can use the Group search for the incumbent's name (Boehner)
• For zipcode, use the main District Office. Use Google ("incumbent" District Office), the local phone book or search the Congressional directory.

2. On President's Day (Monday February 16), let's organize "Support President Obama" candidate caucus in every Republican district, and invite every Democrat who might want to run to speak for 10 minutes.

3. After the candidates speak, the Progressive Caucus should take a vote:

• Endorse one of the candidates and get to work (see #4)
• Schedule another caucus to narrow down the field and/or invite more possible candidates

4. Get to work

• Form a campaign committee with a Treasurer and register with the FEC and ActBlue
• Create a Gmail account as a campaign inbox (firstname.lastname@gmail.com)
• Create two Google groups - a small discussion group for campaign organizing and a large announcement group for news
• Use ActBlue to start collecting contributions with an initial goal of $10,000
• Create a Facebook Cause as the campaign homepage and use the ActBlue widget
• Encourage Facebook users to sign up as friends and participate in discussion threads
• Create groups on democracyforamerica.org, and other social networks, with a dedicated volunteer to manage each one
• Send the candidate and a campaign organizer to local progressive meetups like DrinkingLiberally, as well as regular Democratic clubs
• Use campaign money to buy a Google adword using the keyword of the Republican incumbent, so everyone who searches on the Republican's name will see an ad for the Democratic challenger

Update 1: Josh Marshall suggests we target the industrial Midwest, but the Receission is affecting every part of the country.

It grated on a lot of people -- and I include myself -- to see Obama going every extra length to cater to Republican nonsense. But it's left little question who was doing what. One benefit the Republicans carry out of the 2008 election is that most of the remaining Republicans come from districts that are so red that it's hard for Democrats to ever contest them. But not all of them. And in a lot the industrial Midwest especially, the GOP is the party of 'no'.