Speaker Hensarling?

It isn't easy getting credible and dependable Republican staffers on Capitol Hill to speak with me, even off the record. They're almost as bad as Blue Dogs and New Dems. I lucked out the other day-- with a slightly drunk-- and very horny-- one, who took a shine to my companion and was eager to show how well-connected he is. He seemed a lot more certain than anyone else I've spoken to that Boehner won't be running for Speaker again. Everyone else tells me he's wrong, although no one is certain. He says he is certain. And he says the lines are already being drawn for who will be the next Speaker.

No one-- on either side of the aisle-- gives Steve Israel any chance of winning back a majority for the Democrats. They need a net gain of 17 seats and it's tell that his vaunted and lame Red-to-Blue program only includes 16. And Israel is, once again, granting imunity to every Republican senior policymaker, even the ones in vulnerable districts like Fred Upton (MI-6), Paul Ryan (WI-01), Mike Rogers (MI-08), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27), Peter Roskam (IL-06), Joe Pitts (PA-16) and Darrell Issa (CA-49). On top of that, he recruiting-- a motley array of anti-Choice, gay-hating, corporate whores and Blue Dogs for the most part-- is the worst ever, certainly nothing that will inspire any kind of enthusiasm from the base. So Republicans feel they're playing fro keeps. The Democrats will be elected a Minority Leader; the GOP will be electing a Speaker. But if not Boehner, who?

Some extremists think they can pull a Newt Gingrich kind of bottom of revolution and put in one of the angry sociopaths, perhaps Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), a clueless, Koch-backed neo-fascist. Almost everyone else feels thinks Cantor has it wrapped up. Almost. But not everyone. My inebriated staffer says Texas Wall Street shill-- which is also an apt description of Cantor-- Jeb Hensarling from burbs east of Dallas, is working diligently to offer himself as an alternative to Cantor when Hueslkamp is laughed out of the conference. The right wing of the party is demanding more power and Cantor has been tainted by his association with Boehner. Huelskamp may not be plausible but Hensarling has a lot of support from teabaggers and, more important, from the big money behind teabaggers and from the radical groups (like Club for Growth and Heritage) lumped in with the teabaggers.

"A lot of our Members," my informant insisted, "view Hensarling as a more viable alternative to Cantor than Huelskamp, Price or Scalise. And Texans stick together… there are two dozen of them in the conference. They want someone who won't compromise with the Democrats and who will get a lot tougher with Obama than Boehner and Cantor have been… Remember, there are more Members than you think who don't recognize Obama as a legitimate president and see his occupation of the White House as a stain on the national honor." (Watch the video below.)

At that point my friend abruptly stood up from the table. I felt there was a lot more we could get out of this guy but he was leaving (and he was driving.) When we got to the car, he said the staffer kept rubbing his leg and he said the only alternative to leaving was to puke or to belt him. I couldn't get a comment out of Hensarling's office some freak from Club for Growth told me that Cantor is "practically a socialist" who wants to punish successful businessmen by raising taxes on them and that they were counting on someone like Hensarling to save the party and the nation. When pressed about Hensarling instead of "someone like Hensarling," I couldn't get a straight answer. I don't think there even are any straight Republicans left.