I'm told that it works whether you believe it or not***

There's been a great debate in the comments here on Libertarians: crazy or not, and on Obamacare: can the Democrats cheat their way out of this disaster.  The comments by all y'all have been precisely what you'd expect - passionate, packed full o'smart, and (mostly) respectful to other commenters.

I feel like such a salonnier*.

Having (mostly) stayed out of the fray, my thoughts are that people have rather the most (political) power now that they will have in these debates.  Consider the civil war currently in full frontal bayonet charge within the Republican party.  There's nary a Republican Congressman who is not daily briefed on the polls here.  And Republican Senators up for re-election are briefed twice a day.

And so this is your OTE - Opportunity To Excel.  Call, write, or email your congress critter or Senator.  Explain that you are a small government type, and ask what his platform is to reduce the size of government.  State that you prefer a written response, and that if it's canned you will take that as a sign that he's a Big Government sort of guy (and a particularly dim sort at that) and that you'll seek out his primary opponent to help during this race.

Why should you do this?  Well, Google tells me that traffic here at Borepatch Central Command is, while not "sell the joint and retire to Central America", such that even a 2% rate of people sending these messages in will result in maybe a thousand letters a month.  Discount that by half for repeat visitors, and think on the power of our little Salon being able to send 500 unwanted, polite but plausibly threatening letters to the Washington D. C. ramoras.  I expect that if this were to be replicated across our little corner of the Blogosphere (Tam, Unc, etc) that this would be 20 times bigger volume.

And here's the kicker - it doesn't really matter whether all y'all will actually stand on street corners with clipboards gathering signatures for R0nP4uL! - it just matters whether your elected Ramora thinks that you might be.

Bonus points for putting the following in your letter to your elected Ramora: "Christine O'Donnell was a useful test case in that she showed that the majority of the Republican electorate was willing to vote for a masturbating Witch rather than for the Republican Establishment.  So which are you?"**

The beauty is that if each Ramora only gets a handful of these sort of messages in the next 3-4 months, it will focus their minds greatly on the issues they will have to vote on in 2014.  The prospect of being hanged in a fortnight will encourage les autres, and all that.  At least you'll contribute to indigestion on Capital Hill.

* Yeah, I know - I need to shaddup.

* Bootnote: I do believe that this post is the first time that we've seen the term "masturbating witch" here.  I only use the term forensically, of course, and shudder to think what sort of Internet Rule 34 google searches will bring people here ....

*** The title of the post refers to the story of when Lord Rutherford - a paragon of the Victorian Scientific Establishment - invited a Member of the House of Commons to his laboratory (please pronounce this with five, and not four, syllables).  His friend remarked on the horse shoe nailed over the doorway (pointing up to catch all the luck raining down from Heaven, 'natch). 

"I say, you don't believe in all this superstitious rot, what?"

Rutherford is said to have replied, "Of course not.  However, I am assured that it works whether I believe it or not."