Pajamas Government

Shortly after taking office, Grayson--recognizable on the Hill for his 6'4" frame, which fills his pinstripe suits and flamboyantly mismatched shirts and ties--began making opposition to the bankers and regulators who precipitated last year's financial collapse the signature issue of his first term. He poached Matt Stoller, co-founder of the OpenLeft site and one of the netroots' most prominent liberal bloggers, to advise him on financial services. "Usually I have to push candidates to become more aggressive," Stoller wrote on his blog after meeting Grayson, "in Grayson's case, he pushed me." He has relished providing tongue-lashings to the likes of Timothy Geithner or Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. His grilling of Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman was watched more than one million times on YouTube.

And, to his credit, his argument has taken hold--a Federal Reserve audit bill, once relegated to the margins of the Ron Paul fanatics, now has about 100 Democratic co-sponsors in the House. According to Politico, Barney Frank is now working with the sponsors of the bill to achieve more openness in the Fed. It's a development that pretty clearly wouldn't have happened without Grayson.

If Grayson's videos have become Internet hits, they weren't exactly random phenomena. His staff likes to upload them--and then make him available to discuss them on blogs like Firedoglake with commenters named "beerfart liberal" and "cocktailhag." Unlike other politicians, whose appearances on the sites only serve to highlight that they come from another planet, Grayson speaks their language. He even speaks their language when addressing the mainstream media--his public statements are rife with splenetic rhetoric and zingers. For example: "Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves attention. ... Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If America ever did one percent of what he wanted us to do, then we'd all need painkillers.”

The curse of bloggers is that they can never turn off. There's always another post to write, another enemy to engage. And even sympathetic colleagues have begun to fret about Grayson's work ethic and the energy required for maintaining such a steady state of high dudgeon. "He works late at night, early in the morning, and I'm just saying, you got to have some balance," Representative Corrine Brown told me.

But the bigger problem is that his method may be ill-suited to his Central Florida constituents. Before his victory, Republicans had held his seat for 24 years. And now, voters don't quite seem to know what to make of the new guy. Only about one-third of Grayson's constituents view him favorably, according to one poll, and Republicans are already treating his district like one of the easiest pickoffs for the 2010 midterms. Of course, Grayson isn't the type to roll over. He has an impressive personal war chest that his comrades in the blogosphere will likely help him fill--and the type of self-righteousness that keeps a man soldiering forward. When I asked him about his motivation, he cited the Book of Deuteronomy. "Justice, justice, ye shall seek," he intoned. It was an answer that moved him to the brink of tears.   

Marin Cogan is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.