Wondering Who The Republican Party's Next Todd Akin Will Be? There Are So Many To Choose From

Get used to seeing pictures of New Jersey teabagger Steve Lonegan yelling

Steve Stockman's deranged "John Cornyn-is-a-liberal" campaign really is something to behold. Stockman, a former vagrant strung out out on and dealing a wide varietis drugs, is making a lot of ambient noise on twitter and producing amusing infographics like these:

In December, when he announced he would be abandoning his House seat to primary Cornyn, he asserted that "Liberal John Cornyn wakes up every morning and works to make the Senate a more liberal place. That’s why I am running for the United States Senate. I have a 100% pro-gun, pro-life, conservative voting record in Congress." One top staffer for a conservative Republican in the House told me that Stockman is widely viewed as "crackpot… He's toxic… No one wants to get anywhere bear him. He's probably the least effective member of our caucus… It must have been a very frustrating year for him. None of our members pay the crazy things he's always saying any attention at all. And attention is what this poor man is craving… I don't think even the most extreme groups like Club for Growth and FreedomWorks will back him. I wouldn't be too worried if I were Big John."

But with polls showing Cornyn crushing the hyperbolic Stockman-- 50-6% according to Republican Party polling outfit Wilson Perkins Allen Research-- Cornyn's strategy is to just pretty much ignore Stockman and hope he burns himself out-- or ODs.

The NRCC wishes they could ignore some of the crackpot fringe characters the Tea Party is putting up to run in important seats aound the country. Over the weekend, The Hill's Cameron Joseph reported on the GOP's primary problem. And some of these races are not the long shots the Texas Senate primary is. He's warning of more than one potential "Todd Akin problem" for the Republicans.

After a rash of recent retirements by entrenched incumbents, Republicans are unexpectedly defending a number of seats in tossup or GOP-leaning districts. And to the national party’s chagrin, many of those controversial candidates are already running or planning to-- and if they emerge as the nominee, it could endanger the GOP’s hold on the critical seats.

Crowded, expensive primaries that produce flawed candidates are nothing new for Republicans. But the epidemic has been most problematic on the Senate side, where gaffe-prone candidates like Akin in Missouri, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware cost them winnable seats the last two cycles. Now, it’s threatening to bleed into congressional races, too.

“The House landscape is littered with land-mine candidates in certain seats and districts,” said Cook Political Report House Editor David Wasserman. “That doesn't mean the nomination of those candidates will doom Republican chances in those district, but it'd force Republicans to spend more money and effort than they'd like to and give Democrats hope in some of the districts they need to win.”

As Democrats have gleefully welcomed newfound opportunities in swing districts due to recent retirements from Reps. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Tom Latham (R-Iowa) and Rep. Bill Young’s (R-Fla.) death, they’ve salivated at some of the candidates who have already announced.

…Here are a few of the pivotal races giving Republicans heartburn:

New Jersey’s 3rd District-- Retiring Rep. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.)

The former NFL lineman’s decision to retire has opened up a seat President Obama carried in both 2008 and 2012. Former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan (R), a Tea Party-affiliated former Senate candidate, is running and starts the race with early advantages in organization and name identification.

Lonegan made a number of controversial comments during the special election last year against now-Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed him at a large rally in the state, and he embraced a number of conservative social stances.

Republicans are hopeful another strong candidate can emerge, but fear Lonegan will be hard to beat in a primary and would be all but unelectable in the general election.

“The Lonegan thing is not helpful, for sure,” said one national GOP strategist.

Meanwhile, Democrats are all too happy to welcome Lonegan back into politics, as they hope to regain the seat they lost in 2010.

“In a perfect world, he runs every year for something,” laughed one state operative.

Virginia’s 10th District-- Retiring Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.)

Controversial state Sen. Dick Black (R) announced his bid for Wolf’s slightly GOP-leaning Northern Virginia House seat earlier this week. Black, a staunch social conservative, has compared abortion clinics to Auschwitz and handed out plastic fetuses ahead of a legislative vote on abortion.

In fact, national Republicans say they might not even spend money on the district if Black is the nominee.

“He's like a ticking time bomb,” said one GOP strategist.

Many establishment Republicans are hopeful Virginia Del. Barbara Comstock (R) can unite the GOP field win the nomination, and she’s received early endorsements from both wings of the party-- conservative talk radio host Mark Levin and former presidential nominee Mitt Romney are both backing her.

But the biggest variable will be how the nomination ends up being decided. Local Republicans will meet on January 23 to decide whether to choose an open primary or a closed party convention, which are usually dominated by very conservative activists. A half-dozen other Republicans are seriously weighing bids for the seat, so no matter what type of nominating process the GOP chooses, there is a high level of uncertainty over who will emerge from the crowded field.

Iowa’s 3rd District-- Retiring Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa)

Numerous candidates are lining up to run for Latham’s seat, which Obama won twice.

A crowded field primary field could hurt the GOP, especially since candidates need to win 35 percent of the vote to clinch the nomination. If no candidate reaches that mark, a local convention of typically-conservative delegates will select the nominee. And such a scenario is Republicans heartburn.

“If there end up being five of these guys running, I'm concerned about it going to a convention,” said former Iowa Republican Party Political Director Craig Robinson.

Republicans also worry about Robert Cramer (R), who has close ties with the state’s powerful religious conservative activists and is likely to run. Cramer is a member of the Family Leader, a group of vocal socially conservative activists in the state, and his appointment to a state board was blocked by Democrats because of his views.

Pennsylvania’s 6th District-- Retiring Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.)

The suburban and exurban district outside of Philadelphia's district leans slightly Republican-- Mitt Romney won it by a narrow margin in 2012, though President Obama carried it in 2008-- and is likely to be competitive now that Gerlach is retiring.

No one yet to launch a bid for Gerlach’s seat after his announcement last Monday, but local observers say former gubernatorial and Senate candidate Sam Rohrer (R) is likely to throw his hat in the ring.

Rohrer has deep ties with both the Tea Party and religious conservatives and would be formidable in a primary, but too conservative for the swing district.

“He gives us heartburn,” said GOP strategist.

A number of more establishment Republicans are looking at running, but they could split the more centrist primary vote and give Rohrer a boost if he runs.

“This is a ripe district for an establishment-versus-Tea Party primary,” said Keegan Gibson of the Pennsylvania political website PoliticsPA.

It's a mark of how extreme the GOP has become that they're hoping a sociopath like Barbara Comstock is the solution to someone they deem as too far right! In case you've forgotten her, let me remind you of what then-Republican operative David Brock had to say about her in Blinded By The Right. Page 208-9:

One night in the winter of 1995, as the scandal over the firings of workers in the White house travel office reached a crescendo on the Hill I received a late night telephone call from one of Ted's colleagues on an investigative committee, Barbara Comstock. Around the committee, the two Barbaras [Comstock and Olsen] were known as "the Barbarellas," a reference to the 1968 movie starring Jane Fonda as a space-age vixen whose cosmic adventures take her to bizarre planets via rocket ships. Late night calls from Barbara Comstock were not unusual. She often telephoned with the latest tidbit she had dig up in the thousands of pages of administration records she pored through frantically, as if she were looking for a winning lottery ticket she had somehow mislaid. A plain woman with tousled reddish brown hair, she once dropped by my house to watch the rerun of a dreadfully dull Whitewater hearing she had sat through all day. Comstock sat on the edge of her chair shaking, screaming over and over again, "Liars!" As Comstock's leads failed to pan out and she was unable to catch anyone in a lie, the Republican aide confided that the Clinton scandals were driving her to distraction, to the unfortunate point that she was ignoring the needs of her own family. A very smart lawyer by training and the main breadwinner for her charismatic, happy-go-lucky husband and kids, Comstock remarked that maybe she couldn't get Hillary's sins off her brain "because Hillary reminds me of me. I am Hillary." In this admission a vivid illustration of a much wider "Hillary" phenomenon can be seen. Comstock knew nothing about Hillary Clinton. Comstock's "Hillary" was imaginary, a construction composed entirely of the negative points in her own life.

Comstock invited me to go along on an expedition to the Washington home of senior White House aide David Watkins, the central figure in the travel scandal Olson and Comstock were probing. A short time later, Republican lawyers Comstock, Olson, and other congressional investigators, including David Bossie, and Whitewater investigator Christopher Bartomolucci, pulled up outside my house in an SUV. Though I wasn't sure what the group hoped to accomplish-- they were visibly frustrated with their inability so far to incriminate Watkins-- I went along for the ride. Olson explained that Congressman Sonny Bono had cleared us into the private, gated community where both Bono and Watkins lived, in the northwest section of Georgetown. When we arrived at our destination, Olsen giddily leapt from the truck, trespassed onto Watkins's property, and hopped down a steep cliff that abutted his home. Barbara peered into Watkins's window where she observed him-- watching television. No crime there.

Still, better than "the ticking time-bomb," Dick Black. Jesus! And The Hill completely missed the bloody primary battle already gearing up to replace Buck McKeon as he crosses over to K Street. CA-25-- Antelope Valley, Santa Clarita Valley and Simi Valley-- are seeing the seams of the GOP split apart as McKeon's handpicked successor, carpetbagger Tony Strickland, being challenged by the single most right-wing member of the California state legislature, extremist whack job Steve Knight. Afraid to face Democrat Lee Rogers again, McKeon hopes Strickland can hold the Los Angeles area seat for the GOP, despite demographic shifts away from what Republicans need to hold districts. And Knight has built his political career on hatred against and bigotry towards Hispanic voters who have come into their own right in his own backyard.

California's 25th District-- Retiring Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA)

Steve Israel is blind to this key race but Knight's voting record would be considered ultra-conservative even for a backward district in Alabama or Mississippi. In suburban L.A., it's just bizarre and a throwback to another century. Widely considered a shill for the NRA and an automaton for the most extreme right-wing proposals that ever come up in Sacramento, Knight was one of only 11 senators who voted against increasing the minimum wage and, despite representing a district with a huge Hispanic population, he was one of only 8 senators who voted against drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants. When the Governor decided to expand Medicaid in line with the Affordable Care Act, only 7 die-hard right-wingers opposed it, Knight being one of them, of course. He was also one of only 8 senators to fully back unregulated fracking in California earthquake zones. He is vehemently anti-Choice and anti-gay and voted against every piece of legislation promoting equality that has ever come before him. For example, last May he was one of only 9 senators to vote against a bipartisan bill that prohibits tax-exempt status for organizations that discriminate against the LGBT community and he was also one one of only seven sociopaths who opposed an anti-bullying bill that passed the Senate with huge bipartisan support. One legislator told me that Knight isn't a bad guy on a personal level but that he's "an inflexible ideologue… probably the single least effective member of the state legislature… Sure, Strickland is no prize but Knight makes even him look almost good!" Key word: "almost."