Quote:

---

Conservative humor is alive and well. Harry Reid's challenger in Nevada, Sue Lowden, strikes comedy gold with her silly "livestock barter" program for doctors:

Sue Lowden (R), the leading Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, recently articulated her vision of how the American health-care system should work. At a local candidate forum, Lowden, a former state senator and chair of the Nevada Republican Party, encouraged Nevadans to "go ahead and barter with your doctor." It would, she insisted, "get get prices down in a hurry."

"I'm telling you that this works," the Republican candidate explained. "You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say, 'I'll paint your house.' I mean, that's the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I'm not backing down from that system."

It's a permanent credibility-killer. It's one thing to be a confused, far-right candidate. It's another to be a laughingstock.

---

Quote:

---

Lowden's Communications Director Crystal Feldman defended her argument, telling CNN, "Sue never offered to exchange livestock for health care, she merely referred to practices used in the past."

"Bartering with your doctor is not a new concept, nor is it a long term solution," added Feldman, who provided a list of news clips that lend credence to the idea.

Lowden's campaign also accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of fueling the criticism. Lowden could face-off against Reid in the general election, if she wins Nevada's Republican primary on June 8.

---

Quote:

---

Sue Lowden has a problem: Chickens are really funny.

Lowden, the GOP front-runner to take on vulnerable Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, has all the makings of a majority leader-toppler.

A casino executive, she can tout herself as a job creator during a devastating recession. She’s also got the looks and smooth delivery of a former beauty queen – Miss New Jersey 1973! – and Las Vegas TV anchorwoman.

Picture her next to the soft-spoken and charisma-deprived Reid and the Sarah Palin comparisons are inevitable.

A sampling of Wednesday Twitter traffic revealed a multitude of possible riffs:

@StiffsGeorges: Anybody know where I can get a hold of some chickens to barter for hotel room @ Pioneer Gambling Hall [one of Lowden’s properties] in scenic Laughlin?

@KagroX: I threw a chicken in the toll basket on the Parkway other day & they looked at me like I was a GOP Sen candidate!

@JeoFree: It's even worse when they pay in rubber chickens, because those always bounce.

Even though something else will soon distract the Twitterati, the episode leaves Lowden with two giant headaches:

First, female candidates are often forced to defend their intellectual gravitas in a way their male counterparts aren’t. It’s completely unfair, but it’s also reality. The Chicken Catastrophe does nothing to bolster impressions of Lowden as a serious candidate.

Second, humorous arguments have a way of sticking.

We're now wondering: Might poultry also have the power to deflate a Senate campaign?

---

Quote:

---

Why Is She Keeping This Going? The Plum Line's Greg Sargent doesn't get it. "Sue Lowden has now tripled down on her call for Americans to barter for health care," he writes. "There's a larger political context here, and Lowden’s tripling down on the idea only ensures that the story keeps on going, potentially turning her into a national punch line. One Nevada writer describes this as her 'macaca moment.,'" when Republican Senatorial candidate George Allen sunk his otherwise certain 2006 victory by calling an Indian opposition aid "macaca."

Barter Economies Don't Work Liberal blogger Duncan "Atrios" Black gets real. "All joking aside, there's a reason we no longer have a barter economy. It's tremendously inefficient. Transactions require a 'mutual coincidence of wants,' meaning I have to have something you actually want to have in exchange for my heart surgery. Many goods are highly indivisible - can't trade half a live chicken - making precise pricing difficult."

Unless the law was changed in the last several months, "backyard chickens" are illegal here in [Philadelphia]. There is a place a few blocks away that sells live poultry, but I must find something else to barter for them. Just how many chickens should I stockpile in my medical savings account? Since I can't keep them in the backyard, I'll need to have the poultry store act as my bank.

Lowden Turned My Sarcastic Joke Into Policy Talking Points Memo Josh Marshall marvels. When Lowden first proposed bartering, "I mocked her with the headline: 'I bid three chickens for that MRI!' But I sort of figured she'd rethink that plan after her advisors sat her down for a moment and explained the concept of a cash economy or maybe if she found out what 'barter' meant. But it turns out that she was serious. Not just serious. She was actually thinking about payment in chickens too."

---

Quote:

---

Today, Dr. Robin Titus, a friend of Sue Lowden, sent a letter to the editor of the right-wing newspaper the Las Vegas Review-Journal in support of the barter system. Dr. Titus says in the letter that she has “bartered with patients -- for alfalfa hay, a bath tub, yard work and horse shoeing in exchange for my care.” (Dr. Robin Titus also happens to be a Republican who was also running for US Senate until she withdrew from the race earlier this year.)

Meanwhile, some Nevada Democrats wanted to see if it was possible to barter for an H1Ni flu shot at Walgreen's, but they were turned away. Still wanting to learn more about the Lowden Plan for Health Care, the Democrats showed up at Sue Lowden’s campaign Headquarters with one goat and four chickens but no one was available to talk to them other than the receptionists who was not up to speed on the Lowden Health Care Plan.

---

Quote:

---

And all this time, you thought state Rep. Mike Bell was a kook. But he was absolutely onto something when he said people who choose not to buy health insurance can pay their medical bills with sacks of vegetables like the Mennonites do in his hillbilly district.

This idea definitely has legs. The possibilities are endless! Imagine the primo health care you could buy with a coonskin cap or possum pelt.

---