Justin Amash Knows That The Most Extreme Right Members Of Congress Only Drink Cherry Coke

Above you see a new 6-figure Club for Growth ad for one of their threatened incumbents, Michigan Ayn Rand fanatic Justin Amish. They are attacking his Establishment opponent Brian Ellis who is backed by Karl Rove and "business interests" openly-- and by Boehner and Cantor surreptitiously.

Ellis is Amash’s business-backed challenger and he is opting for a horseshoes strategy against the incumbent; he wants to hit Amash from both the left and the right. When it comes to defunding Obamacare and shutting down the government, Ellis will portray Amash as an uncompromising ideologue. On foreign policy and other issues, Ellis will say Amash isn’t enough of a Republican team player.

For example, Amash has emerged as a leader in the bipartisan coalition to rein in the federal government’s data-gathering and surveillance practices. Ellis emphasizes that he thinks Edward Snowden is a “flat-out traitor.”

So according to Ellis, Amash is too much like Ted Cruz and Ted Kennedy. But he’s careful not to take the critique too far. He says he is just as gung ho against Obamacare. And he is also willing to rein in the National Security Agency.

In 2012, when Amash was a vulnerable freshman running for reelection in his west Michigan district centered on Grand Rapids and Battle Creek (MI-03), the Democratic Party put up a corrupt conservative hack, Steve Pestka, who could never beat him. Amash was a better choice than Pestka and beat him 53-44% in a district that should be winnable for Democrats. Obama had narrowly beaten McCain in 2008, but fell short against homeboy Mitt Romney, 177,772 (53%) to 153,053 (46%). Almost 10,000 of those Obama voters didn't bother casting ballots for Pestka-- an anti-Choice fanatic-- that day. He only one one of MI-03's five counties, Calhoun, and only with 51%.

After getting Paul Ryan to kick Amash off the Budget Committee and putting him on Issa's ridiculous Witch Hunt Committee, Boehner and his clique want Amash out of Congress altogether this year. And they know better than to count on an incompetent loser like Steve Israel to get the job done. Israel hasn't even bothered to recruit an opponent for him this cycle, preferring to put all the DCCC's money into a ridiculous race against hapless backbencher Dan Benishek in a much tougher district than Amash's (PVI is R+5 as opposed to Amash's R+4). Israel recruited a very conservative, anti-Choice, former Guantanamo comandante, Jerry Cannon, no one's idea of a plausible Democratic Party candidate for anything (other than "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel). If Amash out-maneuvers Boehner, as looks likely, he'll be home free for another two year term. Thanks for nothing, Steve Israel and the incompetent DCCC… which has turned losing into a very lucrative art form.

And that leaves Amash to go on his merry way, galvanizing an even more anti-working family bunch of extremist kooks in Congress than they already have. The National Journal reported this morning that even the neo-fascist Republican Study Group isn't far enough to the right for Amash and his closest cronies, particularly hard-right sociopaths Raul Labrador (ID), Mick Mulvaney (SC), Thomas Massie (KY), Mark Meadows (NC), Tom Graves (GA), and Jim Jordan (OH).

The House Liberty Caucus, chaired by Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, quietly launched last year with five or six lawmakers attending a hastily choreographed meeting. Now the group holds a biweekly, invite-only luncheon that draws some two dozen lawmakers and is rapidly becoming an ideological home base for those "core" House conservatives who say the RSC's swelling membership is diluting its ideological intensity.

…The biweekly gathering, held in whatever meeting room is available inside the Capitol complex, is a simple affair. Lawmakers pick from platters of bread and deli meat, cheese and olives, and wash down their meals with cold cans of Cherry Coke, the group's soda of choice. With the exception of Amash's employees, staff members are not permitted, giving the gathering an intimate-- and even secretive-- feel.

…The ascent of Amash's right-wing group has not occurred in a vacuum. Rather, it roughly coincides with a power shift on Capitol Hill that saw momentum swing back toward the establishment after the government shutdown in October and Paul Ryan's budget compromise in December. Some RSC members, upset that the organization did not aggressively combat these forces, say its massive membership has turned the group into the proverbial big ship that turns slowly.

…"The RSC today covers a fairly broad philosophical swath of the party. It's no longer just the hard-core right-wingers," Mulvaney said, adding: "If you want to pay dues, you can get in."

Indeed, any Republican lawmaker may join the RSC by shelling out $5,000 from his or her office accounts. That the group lacks any ideological threshold or litmus test for membership has long been a dilemma for the founders of the group, but increasingly the younger members closer to the grassroots movement are voicing their displeasure.

"There is a concern about the RSC being a group everybody has to belong to so they can go back home and tell their constituents that they're conservative," said Labrador, who was elected in the tea-party wave of 2010. He added: "Every single member of my class was told they needed to join the RSC to show their conservative bonafides back home."

Despite their criticisms, members have been quick to emphasize their approval of RSC Chairman Steve Scalise, whom they say has an unenviable task in leading the largest RSC in the group's 40-year history.

Still, it's apparent that some members have grown restless with the group's alleged lack of aggressiveness. Scalise, who has chaired the group since last January, has made a concerted effort to restore the group as a "member-driven organization" that welcomes wide-ranging dialogue in hopes of producing organic policy solutions the caucus can rally around. But in attempting to facilitate a dialogue between nearly 180 members, some say the group has forfeited its traditional roles of strategic planning and legislative activism.

"The question is, what is the RSC supposed to do?" said Mulvaney, who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Scalise. "I think the RSC is going through an existential type of conversation without even realizing it. Is it going to be a conservative debate club? Or is it an activist organization?"

The verdict, it seems, is already in. Several members likened the RSC to a think tank. Mulvaney said the group is a "conservative debate club." And Labrador, in a separate interview, concluded of the RSC: "It's a debate society."

That's a far cry from how lawmakers characterize their new Liberty Caucus. Several described Amash's group as "intense," partially because the members are friendly enough with one another that they pull no punches. As opposed to RSC meetings that are often consumed by individual member initiatives and requests for legislative cosponsors, Liberty Caucus gatherings are geared toward tackling specific policy dilemmas and deliberating on how conservatives can best address them.

The DCCC is incapable and uninterested in combatting this kind of extremism and never thinks beyond the current quarter. With a landslide of 2010 proportions building against House Democrats, brought primarily by corrupt conservatives inside the Democratic House Establishment, particularly Steve Israel, Steny Hoyer and Joe Crowley, the only hope Democrats have for regaining Congress is in 2016, when Hillary is likely to be a popular nominee with long coattails and Israel is likely to have been replaced after two cycles of disastrous non-leadership. There are probably no House Democrats Pelosi could have picked who would have been more clueless and unable to exploit the Republican Civil War than Steve Israel.