That Whole GOP Rebranding Thing A Few Weeks Ago Was Just For Silly Gooses In The Beltway Press

Reince and Jefferson Beauregard-- not a lick of difference where it matters (except Jefferson Beauregard left his makeup kit at home when he came for the photo-shoot)

That nasty KKK senator from Alabama, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, apparently never got-- or maybe never bothered to read-- the memo about how the Republican Party is making a concerted effort to woo immigrants from Latin America and Asia into the new post-bigoted GOP. Just after midnight, on March 23, as the vote on the budget approached, Sessions offered a rather hateful amendment which lost on a mostly party-line vote, 43-56. Sessions' purpose, as stated, was "To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to achieve savings by prohibiting illegal immigrants or illegal immigrants granted legal status from qualifying for federally subsidized health care."

"Or illegal immigrants granted legal status?" So even after immigrants wind up as citizens, the Republican war against them will continue unabated. "Hey, guys, join our party. We want to make sure you never get any Medicare even if you've been paying for it your whole life!" McCain voted for it and so did other right-wing bigots from states with large Hispanic populations, like Flake (AZ), Cruz (TX), Cornyn (TX), Marco Rubio (FL)-- how would be have voted if this pertained to Cuban refugees?-- Mark Kirk (IL), and Dean Heller (NV). The only Republicans who weren't feeling like bloodthirsty bigots that night were Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AZ). Not even one of the pathetic excuses for Democrats went along with this blatantly unfair and racist amendment.

Apparently that rebranding thing was nothing more than a $10,000,000 publicity stunt to make the GOP look less out of touch with America for a week. It worked... for a week-- and only Inside the Beltway, their whole world anyway. We used this brief Rachel Maddow clip last week to help illustrate a point about North Carolina Republicans going off the rail-- which they surely have. But Rachel's point was broader and it's why I'm bring it up again. Take a look:



It's clear to anyone without blinkers on-- and regardless of how you happen to feel about Obama and his betrayal of working families and Social Security: the Republican Party rebranding circus was all buns and no meat whatsoever. And not just in North Carolina. She goes through a litany of insanity from Republicans in Arkansas, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, North Dakota... everywhere where they've managed to use Democratic Party incompetence to seize control. "The Beltway press," she explained, sounding a familiar tune, "does not cover Republican politics that way but that is what they're doing. It's not what they're talking about; it's what they're doing... The Beltway version of the Republican Party is getting all sorts of unearned credit right now for supposedly trying to move the party past this stuff, right. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus gets all sorts of Beltway credit for saying that Republicans should at least try to sound less Old Testaminty when they talk about social issues... The Beltway line on the Republican Party right now is that social conservatism is over for Republicans, that the party is modernizing and kicking all those old school social conservative issues to the curb. That Beltway line is total bullpucky. Look at what they're doing, not what they're saying... The Beltway common wisdom on this is wrong. The social conservatives have triumphed in the Republican Party. And you can tell it not from what they say to the Beltway press; you can it from how they are using the power that they have in govern all over the country, You cannot distill this stuff out of the Republican Party. This is the Republican Party. If you kick them out of your bedroom they would have no idea where else to go."