Lotta Ugly Behind The Bitter Republican Party Civil War

Ohio's 8th congressional district has been sending John Boehner to Congress for two decades. But he isn't well-liked in the district and the district isn't even Republican by registration. In fact, there are about the same number of registered Democrats and Republicans. The district is mostly Independent, albeit independents who have been voting for Boehner. However, unlike previous years, Boehner has a real opponent now, Justin Coussoule, with an alternative vision to Boehner's outsourcing and off-shoring trade policies-- he was a force behind NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO/GATT and is still pushing for job-killing trade agreements with half a dozen low wage countries-- and to Boehner's vision of bank bailouts on the one had and stiffing middle class families on the other. (Yes, Boehner engineered the victory for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street TARP bailout in 2008.)

Interestingly, Boehner's Ohio media allies can only make one rationale for re-electing him again-- he might wind up as Speaker (as though that might be beneficial for Ohio voters, instead of the disaster his term in office has already proven!). But will the lazy, hard-drinking golfer wind up as Speaker if the Republican manage to win in November? Republican House members prefer to not discuss it openly but there's a lot of chatter about kicking the corrupt Boehner out of the leadership (again) and inserting a more ideologically extreme candidate more in line with the teabaggers. Mike Pence is the obvious choice.

Even AOL managed to sniff this one out, although they focused on the impending battle between right-wing fanatic Jim DeMint and corrupt conservative Mitch McConnell in the Senate where a 10 seat pickup would "include a crop of true limited-government conservatives like Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has suggested eliminating the Departments of Education and Energy; Mike Lee from Utah, who advocates revisiting the 14th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution that deal with citizenship and states' rights; Alaska's Joe Miller, who told "Face the Nation" on Sunday that he believes unemployment benefits are unconstitutional; and Marco Rubio of Florida, who has consistently campaigned on repealing the recently passed health care law."

The result of the new blood, say senators, staffers and congressional scholars, would be a Republican caucus that is far more conservative than it is today, leading an assault on the Obama administration's agenda on the outside, while it faces a potential civil war within.

Without even gaveling into session, Senate-watchers say Day One of a Republican-led Senate would mean the legislative death of anything left on the wish lists of special-interest groups aligned with Democrats, such as the Employee Free Choice Act (the union-backed item known as "card check"); climate change legislation with a cap-and-trade mechanism; comprehensive immigration reform; and Don't Ask Don't Tell, if the Senate fails to pass it this year.

Also in danger would be portions of the health care reform bill passed into law in 2010, which Republicans have repeatedly promised to "repeal and replace," and possibly the most treasured-- but increasingly controversial-- form of legislating: the congressional earmark.

Yesterday's Washington Post put the prospect of a Republican win in even starker terms in a piece by Steven Pearlstein and he started with the House.

Over in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner is pushing the idea that two years of record budget deficits have badly hurt job creation and economic growth. I don't know where Boehner learned his economics, but the last time I checked the textbooks they still said that deficit spending by the government actually increases employment and economic activity. To believe otherwise is to believe that hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts and stimulus spending somehow disappeared from the economy without a trace.

Indeed, anyone who argues, as Boehner does, that it would be economic folly to raise taxes during a recession is a card-carrying Keynesian. In the world outside of the Republican cloakroom, it doesn't matter whether it's the government or a household spending that extra dollar - each generates at least an extra dollar of economic activity somewhere in the world. To the extent that the stimulus money has been spent or invested here in the United States, it is axiomatic that it has generated or protected jobs.

Boehner's delusion finds company on the other side of the Capitol, where Senate Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl claim popular support for their whacky theory that tax cuts, in and of themselves, don't add to budget deficits.

"There is no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminish revenue," McConnell declared, speaking for himself and "virtually all" of his Republican colleagues. The Republicans must be unaware of the warehouses full of reports by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued over the past decade that are chock full of just that sort of evidence. Or perhaps they're holding out for more definitive evidence, like a voice from a burning bush.

Then there's the man of the hour, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who has been busy trying to drive the last remaining moderates from the Republican temple. Writing recently on The Post's op-ed page, DeMint said the country has finally awakened to the fact that President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have tried to "push the United States to the left of Europe." Clearly this is not someone who has spent much time in France.

But there's good news, writes a triumphant DeMint. "Americans quickly realized that if this country was going to survive, they needed to elect people who would respect, not ignore, the limits of government prescribed by the Constitution." In DeMint's political fantasy, there are millions of Americans out there ready to take up arms to limit the reach of the Commerce Clause and protect the sanctity of the 10th Amendment.

Let's not forget that rising star of the conservative movement, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who took to the airwaves to declare that "before Obama, 100 percent of the private economy was private," but now 51 percent of the American economy is under the ownership or control of the federal government." Eat your heart out, Vladimir Putin!

And how do you think the beleaguered private sector has responded to this unwarranted and unconstitutional government takeover of the economy? Profits are booming, and publicly traded share prices are up 70 percent!

For Obama, however, there is no pleasing Wall Street or the business community, no matter how many banks and insurance companies and car companies are rescued from the consequences of their lousy business judgments.