The Battle Of The Clowns-- Texas vs California… A Week From Yesterday

To be honest, the only interest I have in the Republican leadership fight is my hope that they pick someone really demonstrably terrible-- which is a slam dunk, since only demonstrably terrible candidates have offered themselves up for the June 19 election-- and that there be plenty of opportunities for the kinds of humor that will entertain our little community here at DWT. Supposedly, the candidate for Majority Leader most like the defeated Eric Cantor, has it all wrapped up, the fine fella from Bakersfield up top.

He's not really a fine fella; he's a third rate hack who has done the worst job of any Whip I've ever seen. Perfect to move up the ladder at a time when the Republican grassroots-- and the Hate Talk Radio characters who lead them-- are loudly proclaiming they want change. Change is the opposite of Kevin McCarthy. What I like about him becoming leader is that his district is rapidly becoming Hispanic and will kick him out in a few cycles. Sessions (the clown below) was in the same predicament when the Republican legislature came to the rescue and made his purple-trending district less Hispanic by removing Latino precincts around Irving and Grand Prairie, which brought Hispanic population down from a surging 43% to a far more "manageable" 28%. California redistricting doesn't work that way anymore and McCarthy is demographically doomed. This was infographic was done over a year ago. It's worse-- for him-- now:

And it isn't just pure demographics that will make McCarthy vulnerable sooner or later, despite the PVI of R+16. The Kern County district-- with slices of Tulare and L.A. counties-- has been badly served by its congressman, despite a recent oil drilling boom. For all the wealthy corporate famers and oil executives, the district has a great deal of poverty and the medium household income lags the rest of the state ($51,232 vs $57,287), although that only scratches the surface of why McCarthy could turn into another Eric Cantor. According to the American Lung Association, the district's air has the worst particle pollution in the state and, in fact, in the whole country. And much of the district, particularly Hispanic parts of the district, do not have readily available potable drinking water!

Seville, with a population of about 300, is one of dozens of predominantly Latino unincorporated communities in the Central Valley plagued for decades by contaminated drinking water. It is the grim result of more than half a century in which chemical fertilizers, animal wastes, pesticides and other substances have infiltrated aquifers, seeping into the groundwater and eventually into the tap. An estimated 20 percent of small public water systems in Tulare County are unable to meet safe nitrate levels, according to a United Nations representative.

In farmworker communities like Seville, a place of rusty rural mailboxes and backyard roosters where the average yearly income is $14,000, residents like Rebecca Quintana pay double for water: for the tap water they use to shower and wash clothes, and for the five-gallon bottles they must buy weekly for drinking, cooking and brushing their teeth.

Ignoring constituents is what brought Cantor down way more than redistricting, Democratic voting or his legendary "support" for immigration reform. Sessions, infamous for his grotesque corruption and as a notorious whoremonger and hypocritical libertine feigning piety, has been telling his colleagues that McCarthy could be vulnerable to "California pressures" as well as to electoral vissitudes and is urging them to vote for a candidate-- I wonder who-- from a solidly red state.

Sessions emerged from a lunch with the Texas delegation strongly denying rumors that he was dropping out of the race and exuding confidence that he can beat McCarthy despite only having one week to campaign ahead of June 19 leadership elections.

“We several times have found ourselves tangled in our ability to get all of our team together. That is all I say, that is not blaming anybody. I will offer that I can bring us together,” he told reporters.

Sessions stopped short of saying McCarthy has been a bad whip when asked about embarrassing floor mishaps, such as over the farm bill and appropriations measures… “I start from the perspective of I come from a red state and see things in terms of what is good for the country, and modeling those things and selling those attributes will help us win the House, the Senate and the presidency,” he said.

Sessions has a bunch of Texas squishy, undependable yahoos pumping for him-- Joe "Oily Joe" Barton, Steve Stockman (the House Republican's domestic terror connection), Randy Weber, Michael Burgess, John Carter, Blake Farenthold and Jeb Hensarling, the only name on the list that actually matters. McCarthy has all the Establishment shills, from Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Buck McKeon and Tom Cole to lesser lights like Trey Gowdy, Lynn Westmoreland, Devin Nunes, and Marsha Blackburn. There's a good chance that McCarthy will have this whole thing so wrapped up in the next 24 hours that Sessions will flee with his tail between his legs and just give up on a challenge altogether. He's not exactly the courageous insurgent type after all. Raul Labrador, an Idaho teabagger, would be a better candidate for the ideological right to go down to the bottom with. Sessions doesn't have the heart or the guts to lead a losing challenge to the leadership and I doubt his "challenge" will last the weekend.

UPDATE: Sessions Punks Out Already

That didn't take long. Sessions, sensing the futility of going into battle with a bunch of tentative, transactional Texas hacks, raised the white flag and recognized the mighty inevitability of Kevin McCarthy. Neither McCarthy nor Sessions stands for anything that grassroots Republican voters signaled they wanted when they defeated Cantor Tuesday. They don't get it. To them it's all about their own career trajectories and political opportunism.

"After thoughtful consideration and discussion with my colleagues, I have made the decision to not continue my run for House majority leader, Today, it became obvious to me that the measures necessary to run a successful campaign would have created unnecessary and painful division within our party."

Roll Call is reporting that "a group of conservative lawmakers… still wanted an alternative candidate to McCarthy-- and Sessions for that matter-- and were expecting to announce one soon." Looks like Labrador's that guy.