SOME REPUBLICANS ARE FIGURING OUT THE PROBLEM-- AND IT'S THEIR POLICIES AND AGENDA

After the loss of Denny Hastert's old seat in northern Illinois, Republican congressional leaders-- especially Boehner and Cole, started looking for scapegoats. They quickly settled on blaming the candidate. Jim Oberweis was, after all, demonstrably terrible, even if the Republican Party fully embraced him and sent McCain into the district to show what his coattails were worth (nothing, as it turned out). After the solidly Republican district listened to Oberweis, Hastert and McCain on the one hand and then Bill Foster, Dick Durbin and Barack Obama on the other hand, voters showed what they thought of the GOP line and voted in a Democrat for the first time since the district was created in the 1950s.

Then came two far worse Republican catastrophes-- Louisiana and Mississippi-- which led Boehner to declare that even though the Republican candidates were terrible, the real problem was with Republican primary voters, who were too radical and crazy to pick their own candidates. He decided to do it for them-- the way Stalin used to do in the old Soviet Union. This has worked out very badly in the test case-- the Staten Island-Brooklyn district being abandoned by Vito "2-families values" Fossella-- where 3 consecutive Boehner choices turned down his offers of the party's nomination. The local party, in complete disarray, settled on some rich guy with no qualifications (other than a fat purse) who may be challenged by a Republican hot dog vendor detested by the GOP leadership.

Last night CQPolitics reported that mainstream conservatives, worried by the increasingly extremist bent of their party's leadership positions, are going to try talking some sense into Boehner today. Good luck with that one. The radical right lunatic fringe-- like Dallas' Jeb Hensarling-- control the GOP congressional caucus and control the party's congressional agenda-- and they're not changing their extremist positions no matter what mainstream voters say. “In Texas, the only things you find in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos,” said RSC chairman Hensarling, dismissively.

Even McCain, who has backed every harebrained radical policy Bush and Rove sent down to Congress and who has rubber stamped the whole failed agenda, knows how to read the polls-- and the results and the special elections. He's demanding the party move back towards the center-- or at least face in that direction. Cognizant that his coattails were toxic for their candidates, far right congressional Republicans, are refusing.

McCain has split from many in the congressional wing of his party on contentious issues like global warming, campaign finance and a proposal to repeal President Bush’s ban on broader federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

McCain is alienating the Limbaugh and Hannity-trained base while not fooling independents or moderates with his sudden embrace of mainstream values.