Recruiting Republicans To Run For Congress As Democrats Has Usually Ended Badly For All Concerned

Rahm's revolting stench is still the only smell at DCCC headquarters

I'm going to start talking about a rule of Beltway politics by immediately pointing to an exception: Elizabeth Warren, who today-- along with men and women like Bernie Sanders, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva, and Jeff Merkley-- defines what it means to be a real Democrat, was once an Oklahoma Republican! That's a long time ago, the Democratic Party didn't recruit her as a Republican, and, like I said, that's the glaring exception to the rule.

About a decade ago, Blue America was toiling away on behalf of school teacher and union member Dave Lutrin, running for Congress in the Palm Beach area of Florida, a pretty red district represented at the time by hypocritical Republican closet case Mark Foley. We knew that sooner or later Foley would slip up-- they always do-- and expose himself and become very defeatable. But suddenly Lutrin was getting all this intense pressure from Rahm Emanuel, then head of the DCCC, and Steny Hoyer to withdraw from the race. It made no sense. Florida's 16th congressional district was pretty red and not a district that the DCCC ever paid any attention to. It turns out, though, that my hunch about Foley was more than a hunch for Emanuel. Foley's alcoholism and closeted homosexuality were widely known Inside-the-Beltway but it was not as widely known that those two factors had combined to create a very sick yen for being caught molesting underage boys. And he was-- both molesting the boys and caught. But congressional leadership, primarily Republican congressional leadership under fellow closet case Denny Hastert, covered up for him. Rahm Emanuel was very much clued in to what was happening but he saw Mark Foley's tragic crumbling universe as an opportunity to pick up a House seat the Dems weren't counting on. So... he kept his mouth shut too-- complicit in allowing Foley to have his way with young congressional pages (primarily the sons of big GOP donors). Long story, short: Emanuel with Steny Hoyer, froze Lutrin, the legitimate Democratic candidate, out of the race and enticed a wealthy lifelong, conservative Republican, Tim Mahoney, into the race (delivering on their promise of an uncontested primary and a "special circumstance" for the general). The special circumstance was how the media exploded into an orgy of Mark Foley Caught With His Pants Down (in a boys dorm).

Although Foley resigned and checked into a posh clinic for naughty Republicans, it was conveniently too late to get his toxic name off the ballot... and converted "Democrat" Mahoney was elected-- though just barely (49-48%). Mahoney immediately joined the Blue Dogs and reverted to voting with his fellow-Republicans on virtually every crucial issue... and to chase women all over town. His one term ended in scandal, amid sexual escapades, payoffs, hush money and all sorts of things normally associated with Republicans (which, of course, he was, despite the deceptive "D" next to his name). He lost his seat to a Republican. The district was soon redrawn and re-numbered and came to be represented by war criminal and right-wing extremist Allen West who was eventually beaten by yet another DCCC-recruited lifelong corrupt Republican, Patrick Murphy, who Wall Street and Chuck Schumer-- I know, I know: redundant-- picked to oppose Marco Rubio, destroying Alan Grayson in the process and guaranteeing Rubio another 6 year term.

It used to surprise me when crooked conservative Dems like Emanuel, Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen recruited Republicans to run as Democrats. Now it's practically standard operating procedure for the DCCC. Last cycle DCCC-recruited Republicans masquerading as Democratic candidates (like Monica Vernon in Iowa, Mike Derrick in New York, Randy Perkins in that old Palm Beach seat... just a few examples) went down in flames. Unfortunately two former Republican office-holders didn't. Charlie Crist (FL) and Tom O'Halleran (AZ) are both in Congress now and, predictably, both are spending more vote time across the aisle than with the Democrats. O'Halleran is a full-fledged Republican in all but party affiliation. His ProgressivePunch crucial vote score was a ZERO until last week when he finally found something to vote on with the Democrats. His score-- still an "F"-- obviously, is now 27.27-- third worst after wretched Blue Dogs Stephanie Murphy (FL) and Josh Gottheimer (NJ). Crist's score is also among the dozen worst Democrats in Congress-- 40.0. Ryan and McCarthy can count on them both whenever they want to pretend one of their murderous agenda items is "bipartisan."

You would think the Democrats' record of abject failure with recruiting Republicans and trying to pass them off as real Democrats would be something they would have learned not to do. But you'd be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The DCCC believes it's how to win seats and they continue doing it-- in the face of years of evidence to the contrary-- compliments of brain-deficient conservative shitheads on the DCCC recruitment committee like Blue Dog Cheri Bustos (IL) and New Dem Denny Heck (WA). The DCCC's favorite recruits are always wealthy Republicans who they can get to "switch" their registration from GOP to Democrat. Even though Kelly Ward is finally gone as executive director, just watch all the garbage candidates the DCCC drags out from under rocks in the red districts Hillary won in November. They're already up to their old tricks.

For example... they're interested in 2 Austin Republican multimillionaires, Joseph Kopser and Chad Kissinger. (One of the DCCC idiots told me that Berniecrat Tom Wakely is "too progressive for the district," even though he beat the conservative Democrat in last year's primary and then went on-- with no money and no support from the DCCC-- to come closer to beating Lamar Smith than any Democrat ever has previously. You can contribute to Tom's campaign here.) One of the worst of the new dip-shits the DCCC hired, Kyle Layman, is running around trying to recruit conservative candidates for California seats. Perhaps that was how Orange County wound up with "ex"-Republican Harley Rouda running against current Republican Dana Rohrabacher in CA-48, a district where Republicans just couldn't pull themselves to vote for Trump. Though Romney beat Obama there 54.7% to 43.0%, Hillary bested Trumpanzee 47.9% to 46.2%. The DCCC has never run a candidate against Rohrabacher so unless an anti-Trump/Ryan tsunami does all the work for them, they'll fail again in 2018 with their pet Republican. And there are lots of little assholes like Kyle Layman working, coast to coast, for the DCCC, digging up Republicans to pretend to be quasi-Democrats. We talk a lot about the Republican wing of the Democratic Party here but that isn't just Blue Dogs and New Dems; it's also actual Republicans recruited by the DCCC. No quasi-Democrats at the Blue America 2018 thermometer below: