Between Demographics, Teabaggers, Corruption And Blue Dogs Is Pete Sessions Dead Meat?

Sessions raises much of his money from K Street whores but...

Everyday we're hearing about the GOP being ripped apart by its own internal fight-to-the-death between naive, hate-driven teabaggers, who have been weaned on entirely too much Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Lou Dobbs, and practical Republican politicians who just want to do well in their careers. Fox and Hate Talk radio looked good at one time and they enabled it and sat by idly as it set the agenda for the Republican Party base. Now that base is turning against the pragmatic politicians who understand the difference between winning a primary and winning a general election. The teabaggers, predictably, began their forays into electoral politics in South Carolina where they found die hard conservatives like Bob Inglis, Henry Brown and Gresham Barrett "too liberal." But the Know Nothing psychosis has spread all over the country... and really fast. We all watched in a rural northeast NY district near Montreal as Dede Scozzafava's insurmountable lead that would have easily kept NY-23 a red district turn into a Republican civil war that resulted in an unlikely Democratic win. And this week we saw a dozen kooks and loons from the Glenn Beck fringe of the GOP declare that they would run against the Republican Party Establishment taking on even the most extreme nutcases like Ginny Brown-Waite deemed, for some small slip-up, not quite insane enough. Maybe these people claimed Obama was born in Indonesia last week and the Ann Coulter has said he was born in Kenya or Lou Dobbs claimed he was a Mexican... off with her head! A Know Nothing brigade that wouldn't have ever been taken seriously by any political party interested in winning an election-- drooling sociopaths like Chuck DeVore (CA), Marco Rubio (FL), Bradley Rees (VA), David Ryon (OH), Rob John (AL) and Tom Cox (AR)-- is rapidly growing and rapidly making demands on the GOP Establishment to step aside and let them run the incredibly shrinking Republican Party. Yesterday the former Republican Mayor of Niagara, Wisconsin, Joe Stern, declared he would run against popular Democratic incumbent Congressman Steve Kagen-- but not as a Republican, as a teabagger! “Neither party," snarled Stern, "is truly serving my interests at this point. I’m not going to run as a Republican, but I’ll be happy to take their money."

Yesterday, the Republican Establishment, fearing for its own relevance, backed away from a policy of trying to rebuild a big tent. Hapless RNC Chair Michael Steele roared that he would come after any Republican incumbent who strays from the party's obstructionist agenda and supports any Obama initiatives regardless of how popular they are among constituents. At the same time, Cornyn-- with Miss McConnell in tow-- gave way to teabagger demands to stop supporting mainstream candidates, perhaps dooming some of the GOP's most promising candidates in Florida, Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois and Arkansas. Cornyn's announcement of a hands-off policy in primaries was announced simultaneously with a declaration of war by the far right Club For Growth-- architect of the Republican loss in NY-23-- to spend as much as it takes to destroy Charlie Crist.

And then this morning one of the top GOP Establishment hacks, Dallas area Republican Pete Sessions, head of the NRCC, drew a teabagger primary challenge himself! Without serious gerrymandering TX-32 will be a Democratic district in a few years. The demographics are unworkable for the GOP, especially for a hate-fuled shrinking GOP. In 2000, Gore only drew 36% of the vote. Kerry did a bit better 4 years later (40%) and last year Obama had brought the Democratic total to 46% against McCain's 53%--Obama's best performance in any Texas district held by a Republican. The clock is ticking on Pete Sessions.

David Smith, a corporate financial analyst, said that he is readying a campaign that will focus on accountability, fiscal responsibility and the economy. He plans an official campaign kickoff event on Monday.

Smith, who recently moved to Dallas from Denton County north of the city, opposed Sessions' votes in 2008 for a $700 billion program to stabilize the financial markets. He said the party hasn't adhered to fiscally conservative principles outlined in GOP platforms.

"The deficits that we saw under the Bush administration and the bailout under the Bush administration have led directly to the debt spending we see today, and that's what a lot of what both Republicans and, even more so, conservative independents have a problem with," Smith told CQ Politics Wednesday... Smith also accused Sessions of "hypocrisy" for touting a close association with the Boy Scouts of America organization when he held a 2007 fundraiser for this leadership PAC at a Las Vegas burlesque nightclub.

One of the far right blogosphere's primary teabagger sites couldn't laugh hard enough this morning at Sessions' problem. "[I]t is hilarious that he is going to get primaried by a corporate financial analyst. The disgraceful conduct of the Sessions’ led NRCC up in NY-23 has a lot to do with it. But Sessions’ TARP vote is the primary motivator."

Democrats have been eyeing Sessions' increasing vulnerability and the DCCC has recruited some Blue Dog-type to run against him. Firmly opposed to health care reform, he's taken $403,557 in thinly veiled bribes from Big Insurance plus a staggering $1,160,900 from the Medical-Industrial Complex. An hysterical opponent of the kinds of financial system reforms that would protect consumers from the unbridled avarice of Wall Street, Sessions has taken more in bribes from the financial sector ($2,891,140) than any other member of the Texas delegation, beating out the notoriously corrupt Jeb Hensarling by more than half a million dollars. The only Republican House members who have taken bigger bribes from Wall Street are Roy Blunt ($2,892,505), John Boehner ($3,333,409), Eric Cantor ($3,623,035) and Spencer Bachus ($4,028,424), Congress' 4 most dedicated lackeys for banksterism.

So of course, Sessions has been a big proponent of bailing outs for Wall Street. They share their ill-gotten gains with him. Similarly, though one out of three of his own constituents in North Dallas, Oak Cliff and Irving, are uninsured, Sessions is one of the most ferocious opponents of health care reform in the House. Funny that all that opposition would be coming from the House Republican with the highest rate of uninsured of any member of the GOP caucus! According to an official report released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Sessions' district has a staggering 160,000 uninsured people, 140,000 of whom would gain access to high-quality, affordable health insurance under the bill Congress is trying to pass, a bill that would also assist 15,500 small businesses in TX-32 and prevent 7,300 senior citizens in the district from falling into the Part D donut hole every year. North Dallas is home to a lot of very rich people-- most of the Dallas area's elite. Sessions is their congressman and although 96.3% of the people in TX-32 would feel exactly ZERO impact, it's that 3.7% of wealthy people he's concerned about.