Pennsylvania Is More Than Likely To Swing Back To Sanity In November

No one will need that graphic again

It wasn't that long ago that Pennsylvania was a Republican state. In my lifetime presidential elections went to Republicans in the Keystone State 8 times and to Democrats 10 times. In 1980, 1984 and 1988 Pennsylvania voters went for Reagan over Carter (49.6% to 42.8%), for Reagan over Mondale (53.3% to 46.0%) and for George W. Bush over Michael Dukakis (50.7% to 48.4%). After that Bill Clinton won the state twice, Al Gore beat George Bush, John Kerry beat Bush, and then Obama won twice, giving Pennsylvania the reputation for being a blue state. And then along came 2016, where the nation watched in horror as Trump unexpectedly beat Hillary 2,970,733 (48.18%) to 2,926,441 (47.46%)-- just 44,292. Did Putin monkey around in Erie, Luzerne and Chester counties? Hillary still won Obama counties like Delaware, Lackawanna and Dauphine but with far fewer votes. Really, what happened?

Since Tuesday, we've been looking at the excellent results for Democrats-- particularly progressive Democrats-- across the state. Democrats were more motivated to get out and vote than Republicans were. And in many cases progressive candidates beat establishment, right-of-center Democrats. Yesterday Gabriel Debenedetti did a post for New York magazine asking Is Pennsylvania Still Trump Country? Still? Like it ever really was?

As we mentioned Friday, Trump and the Democrats got their dream candidate in Tuesday's GOP Senate primary, racist, xenophobe and lackadaisical Lou Barletta. The state and national GOP was less enthused. It's not likely Barletta can even come close to winning a general election. Debenedetti wrote that "When the fiery Barletta first emerged as the party’s likely standard-bearer there last year, it seemed a clear test of the replicability of Trump’s road map to victory in Pennsylvania, where he was the first GOP presidential candidate to win since 1988. If Barletta could win, that would be a clear sign that Trump might be better positioned to run through Pennsylvania in 2020 than he was even in 2016, when he beat Hillary Clinton there by just 0.7 points. But if Barletta-- as close a Trump ally as exists in Congress-- couldn’t, it would be an obvious warning sign for" Señor Trumpanzee.

That sign is now flashing.

Whereas Pennsylvania was once viewed as a high-profile Senate battleground in 2018-- one of the ten seats up for grabs featuring a Democratic incumbent in a state Trump won-- on Thursday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to even put it in his top tier of interest, in an interview with the Washington Post. He called Barletta and Representative Jim Renacci, his counterpart in Ohio, “credible counterparts that could get onto the radar screen,” but in Pennsylvania’s place he listed states like Arizona and Tennessee, both traditionally conservative states held by retiring Republicans.

It’s an understandable pivot: In Tennessee, which Trump won by 26 points in 2016, his approval rating is at 53 percent-- and the Democratic Senate front-runner’s approval rating is still 67 percent, compared to the Republican front-runner’s 49 percent. But Trump’s approval rating in Pennsylvania was down to 30 percent this spring, according to a Franklin & Marshall poll. That won’t help Barletta-- who’s relatively unknown back home-- in his strategy to hug Trump tight and follow his trail through the state. He appears to be ditching the traditional moderate GOP plan of competing in and around Philadelphia (where Casey is now going for a blowout), and instead aiming to win the northeastern regions that Trump flipped away from Barack Obama.

That means Trump’s 2016, and maybe 2020, plan is, indeed, getting a road test in 2018. And national Republicans are looking away.

It’s simple, say relieved Democrats. “Barletta will get wiped out because he won’t do well in the Philadelphia suburbs, and he won’t do as well as Trump did in other places” either, predicted former Pennsylvania governor and Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell, a Democrat. Without Clinton to beat up on-- and thereby no way to dampen voter turnout in the fired-up suburbs-- and without a flood of national GOP time, energy, and money to engage Trump’s base, Barletta’s attempt to duplicate Trump’s path through Pennsylvania is just too far-fetched, he said. “It’s not credible at all.”

And it isn't just Barletta who's going down in 2018. After the 2016 elections, Pennsylvania sent 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats to Congress. In 2019 it looks likely that Pennsylvania will be sending something like 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans to Congress. If the wave is big enough, it could be 11 Democrats and 7 Republicans. That doesn't look like Trump country-- especially not with the up-and-comer next Lt. Governor, John Fetterman, helping define what Pennsylvania looks like politically.

The GOP Has Found Its Sharron Angle For 2018... In Pennsylvania

The GOP, particularly the NRSC, is starting to acknowledge they have their first Todd Akin/Richard Mourdock of 2018: Lou Barletta. In 2012 when Joe Donnelly was winning a Senate seat in Indiana and Claire McCaskill was being reelected in Missouri because their opponents were judged by voters as too insane and extreme, Bob Casey was running in Pennsylvania against a mainstream conservative, Tom Smith. Casey won 53.7% to 44.6%.

On Tuesday, following the recommendation of Señor Trumpanzee, Pennsylvania Republicans dealt the NRSC an unwindable hand. Barletta's entire career has centered around deranged racism-- fine in a Republican primary, not so fine in a general election. The Washington Examiner would rather blame Barletta's inability to run a competitive race on "his lackadaisical, disorganized effort" than on his racism.

Trump rallied support for Barletta in a string of Wednesday afternoon tweets. But the congressman is taking fire from Republicans at home and in Washington who worried that he is relying too much on the president to boost his flagging Senate bid. Barletta has been a disappointing fundraiser and been too slow to ramp up a capable statewide campaign operation, his critics charge.

"The sense is, nobody knows what the fuck he’s doing," a Republican strategist with Pennsylvania ties said, requesting anonymity in order to speak candidly. "He's not really working it hard. It's a sad thing, because people like Lou."

"Casey should be vulnerable," this Republican added. "But Lou is just like a ghost."

Red flags about Barletta were raised anew after he won the party's Senate nomination on Tuesday with 63 percent of the vote despite being Trump's handpicked candidate and enjoying the support of Pennsylvania's GOP machine. The fourth-term congressman defeated little-known and underfunded state legislator Jim Christiana. Barletta's camp dismisses the criticism, pointing to Casey receiving only 62,000 more votes than those in the GOP primary combined despite registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans by more than 800,000. They also insist that Barletta isn't running a sluggish Senate bid.

Fundraising is a real problem. Barletta looks not just like a crazy racist, but like a crazy racist loser. Even Republicans who like crazy racists, don't like losers. As of the last FEC reporting deadline Bob Casey had raised $16,432,140 and had $9,927,813 cash on hand. Barletta had raised $2,942,100 and had only $1,314,990 left in his war chest. and some of his biggest contributors will go over poorly with Pennsylvania voters: the American Bankers Association, the Koch brothers, frackers, crooked pharmacy outfits and Mitch McConnell.

Barletta got his political start in 1999 as mayor of Hazleton (population 25,000), where he earned a national reputation as a xenophobic asshole demonizing Hispanic immigrants. He introduced legislation making English the official language of Hazleton while allowing the city to deny business permits to employers who hired illegal immigrants and gave the city authority to fine landlords for renting to illegal immigrants. His ordinance was struck down as unconstitutional in a federal district court and, when he appealed, again by the U.S. Court of Appeals. Barletta vowed to take it to the Supreme Court-- but never did, instead using his racism and xenophobia to run win a congressional seat-- with the endorsement of KKK Grand Dragon David Duke-- against a crooked Democrat, Paul Kanjorski in the 2010 GOP wave election. Since then he has been active cultivating anti-Semites, Muslim-haters, conspiracy theorists, and xenophobes who want to end all immigration. He and Trump have a mutual admiration society.

He's also a bad campaigner and at a fundraiser last week with Pat Toomey, a Republican operative reported that "of the 20 people, 15 of them fell asleep. He's just not a good speaker."

The operative also said that Barletta's campaign has been disorganized and that selling the right story in the right areas of the state has been a constant issue. At one point, according to the operative, Barletta suggested having Trump come to the Philadelphia area for a fundraiser in April or May, but the idea got scrapped immediately due to the president's unpopularity in the region.

"You don't bring Trump down here. He's poison," the operative said. "The problem is the campaign seems disorganized, disjointed. I don't think they have a game plan... You've got to use the message where the message sells. It's alright to talk about not letting any illegal immigrants in, but you don't use that in the city of Philadelphia, or Reading... or Lancaster."

Despite the criticism, Barletta still has one big thing going for him: Trump's backing. The president tweeted three times on Wednesday in support of the former Hazleton mayor, including two aimed at Casey, who he derided as a "do-nothing senator" and "Bobby Jr.," referring to his father, Bob Casey, the late former governor of the state.

The campaign also argues that Trump is more engaged in the race than anywhere else in the country, with the president having recorded a robocall ahead of primary day, along with the series of tweets from Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. The campaign also said they are having active conversations with the White House regarding a campaign stop to the state by one of the two White House heavy hitters.

While Trump appreciates Barletta's steadfast support throughout the 2016 campaign, Republicans believe the president needs to be increasingly engaged in the state for both Barletta's sake and for his own. The president won Pennsylvania by just over 44,000 out of more than 6 million votes cast.

"I assume [Trump's] running again. He says he is. Well, this is a nice little trial run of your team and of your ability to attract votes in one of those key states he has to win in the fall," Santorum said. "This doesn't just help Lou. This helps the president "

Will TrumpCare Signal The End Of The Republican Party In California's Federal Politics?

Whip counts change. The most worthless ones-- aside from Steve Scalise's-- come from the clueless Beltway media clods. I laughed when I saw Lou Barletta (R-PA) start turning up on lists of NO votes. There's no one in the House more easily bought-off by a thug like Trump than Barletta. So I wasn't quite as breathlessly in shock as the little children at The Hill when Barletta took his bribe and switched his vote:

Mark Meadows, head of the Freedom Caucus, said a few days ago his own whip count shows 40 NO votes in the House. That's the highest I've seen and I wouldn't count on that big a fuck you to Ryan, who has been busy showing Republicans he knows how to get even with expensive TV ads and cheap rob calls in their own districts. As late as yesterday-- after arm-twisting and some pretty massive bribe promises that netted Trump-- besides Barletta-- John Faso (R-NY), John Katko (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY), Martha McSally (R-AZ), paper tiger Steve King (R-IA), Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Meadows said he had firm NOs from 25 Freedom Caucus members alone. They only need 22 to kill TrumpCare so that it never even goes to the Senate at all.

Last night many of our Senate contacts were telling us they expected Ryan to have a heart to heart with Scalise, realize he doesn't have the votes, and postpone today's do-or-die attempt. Yesterday Trump set Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway and #PresidentBannon loose on a dozen or so Freedom Caucus members he lured over to the White House. A staffer for one member told me that after the meeting, his boss was more sure than every he would be a NO vote. Several members complained that there is no talk about substantive poilicy-- just politics, crude bribes and usually subtle threats.

One firm NO vote is Thomas Massey, a Libertarian-leaning independent thinker from Kentucky. He says he knows over 35 Republicans against it and he feels they can force Ryan to raise the white flag and repeal ObamaCare without replacing it. "This is worse than Obamacare," he told the media, "and we’re going to own it. We’re going to own it lock, stock and barrel." He tweeted jokingly that he had changed his vote late yesterday, sending out this as a tweet:

Ryan and Trump, though, aren't the only ones holding cash under Republicans' noses to get them to vote on TrumpCare. The Kochs want to see it defeated and CNN reported late yesterday that the Koch network is creating a new multimillion dollar fund for Republican candidates in the 2018 reelection races-- but only for the ones who vote against TrumpCare today.

The Koch-aligned networks oppose the bill because they think it does not do enough to scale back former President Barack Obama's health care policies.

"We want to make certain that lawmakers understand the policy consequences of voting for a law that keeps Obamacare intact," Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips said. "We have a history of following up and holding politicians accountable, but we will also be there to support and thank the champions who stand strong and keep their promise."

Ted Lieu addressed a statement directly to the California Republicans in Congress: "Today’s revelation by Governor Jerry Brown of a $6 billion a year tax bill for California under President Trump’s health care plan is astounding.  I triple-dog-dare moderate House Republicans from California to vote for TrumpCare." What he's talking about is that any Republican who votes for TrumpCare is voting to deny their own constituents federal support for health insurance for a simple reason: in California state law mandates abortion coverage in health insurance, while Ryan specifically wrote TrumpCare to deny tax credits for any policy that does that. The consequences would be calamitous for the state's insurance markets and probably signal-- if (and it's a BIG if) the DCCC could find good candidates-- the end of the careers of at least half a dozen California Republicans, namely Steve Knight, David Valadao, Darrell Issa-- regardless of which was he flip-flops today-- Jeff Denham, Mimi Walters, Dana Rohrabacher, Ed Royce maybe even Paul Cook, Ken Calvert and Tom McClintock. The losses of health care under these circumstances go way beyond what was implied by the CBO because they didn't take the abortion inclusion statute into consideration.


If the DCCC is smart they'll nudge their losing import/invention from last cycle, Brian Caforio, aside and get behind local progressive Katie Hill in CA-25 and retire Steve Knight, the right-wing Republican incumbent. Last night, Hill reiterated that she's far from being a fan of TrumpCare while Knight runs around like a chicken without a head trying too decide which position on TrumpCare hurts him more, backing it or opposing it. Katie Hill:

Representative Knight has been non-committal regarding how he will vote on Ryan's repeal bill. At this point, we have no idea if he will vote in favor of a bill that will result in more than 60,000 of his own constituents losing health coverage, and ultimately decimate the entire insurance market here in California. However, given the tremendous pressure he and other Republican members of congress are receiving from GOP leadership and President Trump, it is likely that he will end up voting yes tomorrow.

Health care is a basic human right. If I am elected to congress, I will fight each day to ensure that every single person is able to receive health care that they can afford. It's common sense-- if our people aren't healthy, our society isn't healthy. If anyone gets sick or dies because they can't afford insurance or the care they need, then we are failing as a country and as a community. I won't rest until we know that that won't happen anymore.

Congressman Knight, it's time to put people over party. I know I will.

UPDATE: What Ryan Did To TrumpCare Overnight-- Aromatherapy Is Nice, But Who Will Cover Chemotherapy?

Looks like the GOP Establishment still doesn't have enough votes to pass this Frankenstein's monster of a bill and that it will be postponed 4 or 5 days while they threaten and bribe more Republican members. The changes they made to the bill last night actually turned off even more members! Margot Singer-Katz covered the sausage-making for the NY Times this morning.

There are two main problems with stripping away minimum benefit rules. One is that the meaning of “health insurance” can start to become a little murky. The second is that, in a world in which no one has to offer maternity coverage, no insurance company wants to be the only one that offers it.

Here is the list of Essential Health Benefits that are required under the Affordable Care Act:

• Ambulatory patient services (doctor’s visits)
• Emergency services
• Hospitalization
• Maternity and newborn care
• Mental health and substance abuse disorder services, including behavioral health treatment
• Prescription drugs
• Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
• Laboratory services
• Preventive and wellness services, and chronic disease management
• Pediatric services, including oral and vision care

The list reflects some lobbying of the members of Congress who wrote it. You may notice that dental services are required for children, but not adults, for example. But over all, the list was developed to make insurance for people who buy their own coverage look, roughly, like the kind of coverage people get through their employer. A plan without prescription drug coverage would probably be cheaper than one that covers it, but most people wouldn’t think of that plan as very good insurance for people who have health care needs.

Under the Republican plan, the government would give people who buy their own insurance money to help them pay for it. A 20-year-old who doesn’t get coverage from work or the government, for example, would get $2,000. If the essential health benefits go away, insurance companies would be allowed to sell health plans that don’t cover, say, hospital care. Federal money would help buy these plans.

But history illustrates a potential problem.

In the 1990s, Congress created a tax credit that helped low-income people buy insurance for their children. Quickly, it became clear that unscrupulous entrepreneurs were creating cheap products that weren’t very useful, and marketing them to people eligible for the credit. Congress quickly repealed the provision after investigations from the Government Accountability Office and the Ways and Means Committee uncovered fraud.

Mark Pauly, a professor of health care management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who tends to favor market solutions in health care, said that while the Obamacare rules are “paternalistic,” it would be problematic to offer subsidies without standards. “If they’re going to offer a tax credit for people who are buying insurance, well, what is insurance?” he said, noting that you might end up with the government paying for plans that covered aromatherapy but not hospital care. “You have to specify what’s included.”

A proliferation of $1,995 plans that covered mostly aromatherapy could end up costing the federal government a lot more money than the current G.O.P. plan, since far more people would take advantage of tax credits to buy cheap products, even if they weren’t very valuable.

There’s another reason, besides avoiding fraud, that health economists say benefit rules are important. Obamacare requires insurers to offer health insurance to people who have pre-existing illnesses at the same price as they sell them to healthy people, and the Republican bill would keep this rule. But if an insurance company designs a plan that attracts a lot of sick people, it will be very expensive to cover them, and the insurance company will either lose money or end up charging extremely high prices that would drive away any healthy customers.

...Before Obamacare passed, there were few federal standards for health insurance bought by individuals, and it was not uncommon to find plans that didn’t include prescription drug coverage, mental health services or maternity care. But plans tended to cover most of the other benefits. That was in a world where health insurers could discriminate against sick people. In that era, insurers in most states could simply tell the mother of a mentally ill child that she couldn’t buy insurance. That made it less risky for insurers to offer mental health benefits to everyone else.

David Cutler, a professor at Harvard who helped advise the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act, said he thinks the kind of insurance products that would be offered under the proposed mix of policies could become much more bare-bones than plans before Obamacare. He envisioned an environment in which a typical plan might cover only emergency care and basic preventive services, with everything else as an add-on product, costing almost exactly as much as it would cost to pay for a service out-of-pocket.

Republicans Plan To Flip The Senate In November And Impeach Obama As Quickly As They Can After That

Looking for another reason to vote against Maine Republican Susan Collins?

A few days ago, Jonathan Capehart wrote in the Washington Post that "President Obama will be impeached if the Democrats lose control of the U.S. Senate." Keep in mind that due to the unwillingness of Nancy Pelosi to replace that startlingly incompetent and venal Steve Israel as DCCC chair, the Democrats won't only not win back the House; they will experience a very painful net loss of seats.) Were Patty Murray still in charge of the DSCC, I wouldn't sweat the chances of the Republicans winning that body. But Murray, who was breathtakingly successful last cycle was replaced, while Israel, who was a shockingly abject failure, was held on to prove he hadn't learned a single lesson from the disaster he presided over in 2012. Replacing Murray is another timid centrist stooge like Israel with no courage and no vision, Michael Bennet, a front man for Guy Cecil, who thinks about nothing beyond being Hillary Clinton's campaign manager in 2016.

Bizarre racist sociopath Lou Barletta (R-PA) beat one of the most blatantly corrupt Democrats in Congress in 2010-- but only with 55%. A credible Democrat should be able to replace him in two cycles, if not one. Instead, Israel chose to ignore the northeast Pennsylvania district and focus on districts in Arkansas that are 10 times redder (and which he will lose gigantically). Roly poly Tea Party clown Blake Farenthold was elected at the same time as Barletta, beating Solomon Ortiz by 799 votes (47.8-47.1%). Barletta and Farenthold have something else in common besides the day they managed to get into office. Neither has a DCCC opponent in November. Oh… and one more thing: these are the two fools the GOP is using to push the impeachment message.

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) became the latest to openly discuss impeaching the president. In response to a question from a radio host on Monday, the two-term congressman who was swept in during the tea party wave of 2010, said, Obama is “just absolutely ignoring the Constitution and ignoring the laws and ignoring the checks and balances.” Articles of impeachment, he added, “probably could” pass in the House.

In a later interview, Barletta said one of the reasons he wouldn’t vote for impeachment was because a Democrat-controlled Senate would never convict the Democrat president. Blake also mentions this parenthetically in his piece. Others who have talked about impeachment point to this as the reason not to pursue the extraordinary political rebuke.

Last August at a town hall meeting, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) cited the Senate as a reason for not pursuing impeachment. “If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it,” he said in response to a constituent upset about “the fraudulent birth certificate of Barack Obama” and who wanted him punished. “But it would go to the Senate and he wouldn’t be convicted.” A week later, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was asked, “Why don’t we impeach him [Obama]?” His answer was similar to Farenthold’s. “It’s a good question,” the freshman senator said, “and I’ll tell you the simplest answer: To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate.”

Actually, impeachment is a two-step process that starts in the House. All it takes is a simple majority of that chamber to approve a single article of impeachment against the president for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Once that happens, a president is forever branded as having been impeached. President Andrew Johnson (1868) and President Bill Clinton (1998) share that distinction. President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the full House could vote to impeach him.

To officially remove a president from office, two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict him on those articles of impeachment. Johnson and Clinton were not convicted. Obama could share the same or worse fate. A Republican-controlled Senate could lead to Obama becoming the third president impeached and the first ever to be removed from office.

I don’t make this prediction lightly. The tea party-infused GOP has done things many once believed impossible. I’m thinking specifically about the two instances it brought the nation and the world to the brink of economic ruin because of its resistance to raising the debt ceiling. If Republicans are willing to ignore their leadership and jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States, there really is nothing they aren’t willing to do. And a Republican takeover of the Senate would only embolden them.

I hope level-headed voters in Maine will figure out that a vote for Susan Collins is a vote for a Republican take over of the Senate-- and for impeachment of President Obama. Collins vowed to only stay in the Senate for 2 terms. She's trying to slip into her 4th now. Shenna Bellows would make a far better senator. Another great replacement in the Senate is up to the voters in South Dakota, where Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring and where the Republicans expect to get their careerist special interests guy, Mike Rounds, in. If you don't think Rounds would be a vote for impeachment, you don't know anything about him. Here's a statement Rick Weiland made on the impeachment controversy, which is picking up steam among South Dakota teabaggers.

"Mike Rounds and his support of the South Dakota Republican Party State Convention’s impeachment of the President are an embarrassment to our state and a disservice to the people of South Dakota. It substitutes hate for reason, impeachment motives for rational discussion and impeachment itself for the casting of ballots-- and represents the very opposite of the South Dakota common sense that Mike Rounds claims to be representing.

"It is incredibly sad and disappointing when an extreme minority within a party proposes something so extreme and misguided that entire county delegations, who were at the South Dakota State Republican Party Convention last week in Rapid City, actually voted against it but the purported leader of the party sat by and did nothing to stop it.

"I challenge Mr. Rounds to come out from behind his big money campaign and the special interests bought and paid for big money campaign commercials and tell the people of South Dakota what kind of common sense he thinks it is to put the country through another gut wrenching impeachment fight.

"How can you say with a straight face that you want to represent South Dakota common sense and then vote to rip the country apart with an obviously politically motivated impeachment proceeding?  The type of action the state Republican Party convention endorsed last weekend is how they do things in a banana republic, not the United States.

"There are two things a democracy like ours should never do-- one is shut down the government and threaten to default on our debts-- and the other is to pursue an impeachment over political differences, instead of high crimes and misdemeanors. Mr. Rounds is now on the record supporting both of these extreme efforts.

"As I continue to travel to every one of our South Dakota towns for the second time, I can assure, there isn’t a lot of support for impeaching the President of the United States. People are fed up with this poisonous partisan bickering and want their elected leaders and future leaders to work together to address the many challenges facing our state and country.

"I’m calling on Mr. Rounds today to stand up against this kind of extremism and publicly oppose this impeachment resolution."

You can do your bit in keeping the Senate in Democratic hands-- and away from the impeachment loons-- by contributing to Weiland and to Shenna Bellows on this ActBlue page. One stop shopping.

Eric Cantor And John Boehner Could Never Do The Kind Of Harm To The Democrats That Steve Israel Does

Another vulnerable Republican Israel made sure would have no opponent

Anti-immigrant extremists who follow the lead of Steve King (R-IA) in the House, have been dancing around clicking their heals, claiming that Eric Cantor lost last week because he was "soft" on Hispanics and was opposed enough to giving them a pathway to citizenship. That isn't why he lost his primary, nor is it true that Cantor was sympathetic to the legitimate goals of immigrant reform groups. As he made clear in the expensive directing mailings he did to every Republican voters in VA-07, he was personally responsible for preventing the House from even taking up the bipartisan Senate bill. But when have facts ever stopped the Republican Hate Machine from spouting their crap over and over and over until their feebleminded followers buy in, lock, stock and barrel?

Ironically, the two candidates vying for Cantor's job as Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy and Raul Labrador, are both more in tune with the Senate bill than Cantor was. In other words, the anti-immigrant imbecile celebrating the ousting of Eric Cantor are, in effect, celebrating his replacement by one of two Repiublicans less opposed than he was to comprehensive immigration reform.

If you expect DCCC chairman Steve Israel to take advantage of any of this to beat Republicans in November, you have not been reading DWT carefully or with any regularity. Israel has no interest whatsoever in the issue-- except as a fundraising tool at the grassroots level. As Latino Decisions explained yesterday, despite recent polling that finds that "comprehensive immigration reform is an animating issue for Latino voters and if immigration reform does not happen this year, most Latino voters will hold the Republican Party responsible," the DCCC has done nothing to assist "Latinos and other pro-immigration reform voters to reward or punish members of Congress for their handling of immigration [which] necessitates a competitive electoral environment where marginal shifts in both the composition and preferences of the electorate can make the difference."

The DCCC has ignored all there requests to get serious about fielding and supporting candidates who will benefit by Republican intransigence on immigration. When candidates do work on a grassroots level to take advantage of the issue, the DCCC undercuts them and tells donors to not fund them. Good example would be Jason Ritchie, who is running against anti-immigration bigot Dave Reichert in WA-08, an R+1 district east of Seattle that Obama carried in 2008 and 2012. The DCCC is working against Ritchie and protecting Reichert while funding absurd races by right-wing Democrats in prohibitively red districts-- one with an R+21 PVI. Boehner couldn't have found himself a better DCCC head if he picked one himself. Latino Decisions explained what happened in the CA-25 race, where progressive, pro-immigration reform candidate Lee Rogers-- in the face of 4 years of bitchy hostility from "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel-- was beaten in the dysfunctional jungle primary by two anti-immigration Republicans, Israel having adamantly refused to allow the DCCC to come to his aid. And California isn't the only state where Israel is handing free passes to the GOP.

Perhaps no state better illustrates the Democrats’ recruitment woes than Florida. The Democrats will not have a candidate in Florida’s 13th district. Instead, two minor party candidates will challenge Republican David Jolly, who narrowly won the seat this winter in a special election. The swing district has a 2010 Latino voting age population of 7% and was narrowly carried by Obama (1.5%) in 2012.

In Florida’s 10th, three lackluster Democrats are competing in the August primary to face Daniel Webster. Webster won in 2012 by 3.4% while underperforming Mitt Romney by 3.3% in a district with a 2010 Latino voting age population of over 14%. The Democrats also struggled to recruit a quality challenger in Florida’s 16th before first-time candidate and former professional football player Henry Lawrence filed to run against Vern Buchanan. Buchanan won in 2012 by 7% in a district with a 2010 Latino voting age population of 9%. While Webster has come out in favor of a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, he, like Buchanan voted in favor of Steve King’s DACA amendments.

The Democrats also will not have a candidate in North Carolina’s 9th district to compete against incumbent Robert Pittenger.  Pittenger ran seven points behind Romney in 2012 in a district with a small but growing Latino voting age population.

Other touted Democratic challengers running in key districts are failing to attract party backing. In announcing where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has reserved over $43 million in advertising buys for the fall, only nine Democrats running in Republican held tier one or tier two Latino influence districts are included. To be sure, many of the candidates who will be receiving DCCC support in the fall are vulnerable Democratic incumbents; many representing districts with large Latino voting age populations. Still, eight candidates included in the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program did not make the cut including three candidates running in Latino influence districts: Erin Bilbray (NV-3), Sean Eldridge (NY-19), and Rocky Lara (NM-2).

Of the three, Bilbary is perhaps the most puzzling. She is the daughter of a former member of Congress who was handpicked by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to be the Democrat’s candidate. Her opponent, Joe Heck, represents a district that was carried twice by Obama and has a 2010 Latino voting age population of 13.5%.

Heck’s attempts to navigate the immigration terrain have won him few friends on either side of the issue. After coming out in favor of pathway to citizenship and working for months on legislation akin to the DREAM Act, Heck did not introduce the bill because he was unable to garner support among his Republican House colleagues. Instead, he has voted for Steve King’s DACA amendments and earlier this month, his staff called in the police to disperse a group of immigration reform protestors from his district office. After the episode in which five protestors were cited for trespassing, Heck’s campaign account tweeted “Joe Heck will not be bullied into amnesty by @erinbilbray…”

Updated campaign finance reports indicate that Heck has more than three and half times as much cash on hand as Bilbray, who has raised nearly $800,000. However, without party resources to augment her campaign, Bilbray will have a much more difficult time unseating what should be one of the most vulnerable House Republicans. [Bilbray is one of the only progressives in Israel's Red-to-Blue program this year, which probably explains why he is unenthusiastic about her campaign.]

Indeed, with six months until the 2014 election, the inability of Democrats to make the most of opportunities like California’s 25th, Florida’s 13th, or Nevada’s 3rd, weakens the electoral incentive for House Republicans to move on comprehensive immigration reform even though a clear majority of Americans favor legislation akin to what passed the Senate last June.  Absent these pressures, incumbent Republicans like Joe Heck can continue to mouth their support for comprehensive immigration reform while at the same time voting to support the hardline policies championed by Steve King with little fear of voter repudiation at the ballot box.

With Obama threatening to take executive action to ameliorate the situation for distressed immigrants while the Republicans fight amonst each other and obstruction solutions, some of the worst racists in Congress, like Pennsylvania nativist Lou Barletta, are threatening impeachment. As delusional as he is bigoted, Barletta claims he has the votes to impeach the president if he does anything along the lines of the bipartisan Senate bill on immigration at all.

“He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws and ignoring the checks and balances,” the Pennsylvania Republican said of Obama on the Gary Sutton radio show on Monday. “The problem is, what do you do? For those that say impeach him for breaking the laws or bypassing the laws-- could that pass in the House? It probably could. Is the majority of the American people in favor of impeaching the president? I’m not sure.”

And no, Israel didn't recruit a plausible candidate to run against Barletta either.

Israel refuses to assist Issa's Democratic opponent in any way

Has Steve Israel Been Foiled In His Attempt To Sneak Homophobic Blue Dog Chris Carney Back Into Congress?

When I lived in Stroudsburg, it was part of PA-11 and the congressman was a crooked old Wall Street Democrat, Paul Kanjorski. Back then the PVI was D+5 and Bush only managed to win 43% against Gore in 2000 and 47% against Kerry 4 years later. When Pennsylvania's avatar of xenophobia and racism, Lou Barletta first ran against Kanjorski in 2002, Kanjorski beat him 56-42%. Barletta was back in 2008 and made it much closer-- 52-48%. And then the Republican legislature did a major gerrymandering routine with giving Barletta, then the KKK hero mayor of Hazelton, a safe perch from which to preach his anti-Hispanic claptrap. The district didn't just lose my hometown of Stroudsburg, but also lost the heavily Democratic precincts in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, replacing them with conservative suburbs way to the southwest around Harrisburg. Suddenly a D+5 district was an R+6 district. This time, the bigot beat the crook 54.7% to 45.3%.

"Ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel, the execrable clod Pelosi reappointed to chair the DCCC, even after his grotesque failures in 2012, has been trying to recruit fellow Blue Dog Chris Carney, an anti-Choice and viciously anti-gay conservative ex-congressman from neighboring PA-10. Carney is exactly the kind of garbage Steve Israel is trying to populate the Democratic House caucus with.

When Carney first ran for Congress, he sought Blue America's endorsement. Despite a warning from Markos that he was a sleazy and untrustworthy warmonger, we interviewed him and took him at his word that he was a progressive Democrat. He told us, for example, that, if elected, he would vote for the hate crimes bill then wending its way through Congress. We endorsed him and raised money for him and he was elected. He immediately joined the Blue Dogs and started voting consistently with the Republicans on crucial issues. The exact Hate Crimes bill we discussed at some length on the phone came up and he voted against it, one of only 14 homophobic Democrats to do so. 25 Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats. Years later, one of Carney's staffers told me he was laughing at me and making obscene gestures at the phone during the interview. Blue America was forced to spend over $100,000 helping to defeat him when he refused to return the contributions we had raised for him. When I asked him to, he said, "Fuck you!" What a guy! Just the kind of politician Steve Israel adores.

Now there's a fly in Israel's ointment. On Friday prominent civil rights attorney Andy Ostrowski announced his own candidacy against Barletta. We'll find out more about his stand on issues, although it's worth noting that last year Romney beat Obama in this district 54-45% and that Barletta beat his little-known Democratic opponent 58-42%, garnering more votes than Romney. Barletta won every one of the district's 9 counties, even blue-leaning Dauphin which a Democrat needs to win big in order to take the district.

Republicans Continue Duking It Out Over Immigration Policy

The Republican Party seems divided between those who want to move ahead with the inevitable and make the best of it and hope they eventually get some Hispanic and Asian voters and those who just don't want to ever let go of the hatred, bigotry and racism that defines who they are at their innermost core. It's a new twist in the American immigration saga which has traditionally been about the haters and bigots on one side and those who want cheap labor on the other side. Of course that dynamic still underlies the debate. But the pro-immigration reform Republicans are trying to win the day with the opportunistic political argument instead. It's not gaining much traction and the far right is calling them out for their dishonesty. Today on Fox News Sunday McCain told Chris Wallace that "There are 11 million people living in the shadows, I believe that they deserve to come out of the shadows..." and asked, rehorically of his right-wing detractors, "what do you want to do with them?”

Some Republican congressmen, sick of Boehner's incompetence and his runaway alcoholism-- many complained during the swearing in ceremonies that spouses and parents remarked that he stunk of booze-- are floating the idea of bringing back Newt Gingrich as Speaker! One even went so far as to consult with a parliamentarian to make certain that the Speaker need not be an elected member of Congress! The idea is embarrassing for Boehner but it isn't going anywhere-- except maybe in Tim Huelskamp's dreams. Gingrich, on the other hand, is urging Republican House members to accept "reality" (usually a dirty word in GOP circles) and quickly pass the immigration reform, including the pathway to citizenship the hard right opposes so vociferously. This is from the letter Gingrich sent his list on Friday.

There are 12 million people in this country who have come here illegally. It wasn’t our choice for this to happen, but their presence is a fact. So we must decide: Are we really going to deport all 12 million people, many of whom have deep ties here?

My position was that people who have come here recently, have no ties to this country, should go home. But the-size-fits-all deportation of 12 million people, without regard to their circumstances, would constitute a level of inhumanity the American people would never accept.

As I said in a Florida debate, “We as a nation are not going to walk into some family...and grab a grandmother out and then kick them out.”

In response to this call for discretion and humanity, while at the same time enforcing the law, several other candidates-- including our party’s eventual nominee-- had repeatedly accused me of amnesty.

...It is difficult to understand how someone running for President of the United States, a country with more than 50 million Hispanic citizens, could fail to acknowledge that the American people should not take grandmothers who have been here 25 years, have deep family and community ties-- and forcibly expel them.

When asked in a Florida debate if, in light of his criticism, his own immigration proposal would round up 12 million people and deport them, he replied, “Well, the answer is self-deportation."

And we wonder why the Republican Party achieved historically low levels of support among Latinos in 2012?

...I do not write this to single out Mitt Romney. He worked hard for a long time and his campaign was up against skilled opponents. But the sad fact is that the Republican Party for too long has failed to communicate to Latino Americans a positive vision for the future. Our slide among Asian Americans has been in the works for a generation.

I write this because as the current immigration debate heats up it is critical for us to recognize that words and attitudes really matter. Understanding what people hear matters. We may not mean to say what people hear we say. After decades in politics this is a lesson I have learned the hard way.

As a party, we simply cannot continue with immigration rhetoric that in 2012 became catastrophic-- in large part because it was not grounded in reality.

Senator Marco Rubio has done an important service cutting through some of the baloney with the observation that what we have now is de facto amnesty. It is reality. The 12 million people are here, living and working. Many of them are bound together by the web of human relations-- family, friends, neighbors-- and the American people will not support mass deportation.

That is the reality-- the starting point of the debate about what we, as a country, should do.

This does not mean we as Republicans should give up on our principles, or on the priority of securing the border.

It means we must recognize, as I tried to do in that primary debate, that politics is always an intersection of principles and people.

A party that appears to ignore people won’t get the chance to make the case for its principles-- any of them.

Of course, Newt's wasn't the only e-mail Wingnutia was reading at the end of last week. One of the big Tea Party groups sent their whole list-- and it must be very big because it includes me and the only thing I've ever had to do with the Tea Party was making fun of it-- some hero worship screed on racist Pennsylvania sophomore Lou Barletta. Where many conservatives, like Gingrich, are urging dealing with reality, the die hards refuse to let go of their prejudices and they know they have a kindred soul in Barletta. "If anyone in Congress is ready to lead the fight against illegal immigration," the letter began, "it’s Pennsylvania’s Lou Barletta. As a mayor and in one term as a congressman, Barletta has earned a reputation for being tough on immigrants here illegally. Many around the nation may be unaware of him and the work that he has done, but that may not be true much longer, as he is sure to be vocal in the fomenting debate over immigration reform."

The teabaggers and Know Nothings are disappointed with Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Eric Cantor (R-VA) for wanting compromise and they're congratulating Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) for their obstinence but it's Barletta they look to as the Moses of their holy jihad against reality.

[Then Mayor Barletta] enacted the Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance, which “would fine landlords who knowingly provided housing to illegal immigrants, fine employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants, and make English the official language of Hazleton.” It was, however, struck down by multiple courts and thus has never been enforced.

Nevertheless, Barletta views illegal immigration as a national security, as it undoubtedly is. As a mayor trying to protect his citizens, he was determined to make Hazleton the toughest place in America for illegal immigrants. Ben Terris in National Journal claims that making the stopping of illegal immigration a top priority in the fight against crime doesn’t make much sense, since immigrants have lower rates of incarceration that native born citizens. He admits that this doesn’t separate legal immigrants from the illegal ones. And seeing as 27% of federal inmates were illegal immigrants during the period that the crimes occurred, while illegal immigrants only made up around 4% of the population, Terris’ objection is hard to take seriously.

Barletta’s tough stance is certainly one of the things that has helped him maintain the support of his constituents as he has gone from his position as mayor to becoming a congressman in 2010. When asking to be considered for a spot on the House Judiciary Committee, he emphasized his experience on the immigration issue, in the process pointing out that he is strong supporter of legal immigration and that the Latino population continued to grow even after the enactment of laws against illegal immigrants. He believes that legal immigrants are just as upset about illegal immigration as he is.

Barletta is certainly not taking his eye off the ball now, even with while Republican colleagues get behind a less strict plan. Of Rubio’s proposal he has said, “They are rushing to try and take this issue off the table, but they aren’t fixing the existing problems…. It’s sending a signal that there is a green light to come here illegally.” No should hope to see any plan rushing through Congress without the proverbial iron sharpening iron to make the solution as good as it can be. Anyone searching for a House Republican who won’t back from addressing illegal immigration in a tough manner need look no further than Congressman Lou Barletta.

Barletta is a supporter of legal immigration? Really? He was sued-- successfully-- by a Puerto Rican group-- who are as American as he is-- for discriminating against Puerto Ricans while he was mayor. I guess that's a detail the teabaggers just brush under their dirty little rug so they can make up their myths. And the truth about Barletta's disgraceful legacy in Hazleton isn't just that he wrecked the town's reputation but that he inadvertently made it a magnet for Latinos! The population of the town has increased-- by 2,000 people-- for the first time in 70 years. Most of them are Hispanics. In fact 37% of Hazleton is now Hispanic.

“They started buying cars and fixing houses so Lowe’s and other businesses started flourishing, and they started paying taxes to the city,” said Dr. Agapito Lopez, an opponent of the city’s immigration law.

As the population changed, so did relationships between the Latino and Anglo communities, compared to when the law was proposed.

“The feelings were so raw on both sides, and there was certainly a greater sense of mistrust than we see today,” Bob Curry said.

Curry heads an effort to build a youth center for the Hazleton Integration Project of city native and Major League Baseball manager Joe Maddon. More people donated money, Curry believes, and offered to volunteer for the center, which will serve children of all ethnicities, now than would have offered to help seven years ago during the fight about the law.

The fight reached its height on July 13, 2006, when people carrying flags and signs for and against the law filled council chambers, spilled onto the steps of City Hall and jammed sidewalks of North Church Street.

Coverage of the issue put Barletta and the city on CBS News’ 60 Minutes and CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight. Radio programs and newspaper articles spread stories about Hazleton’s law around the world.

Today, the fight continues in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. While judges there ruled the law unconstitutional in 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered them to reconsider the case in view of a decision upholding an Arizona law. Laws in both Hazleton and Arizona penalize employers who knowingly hire undocumented residents, whereas Hazleton’s law also would punish landlords for renting to undocumented tenants... Barletta said he is ready to challenge leaders of his own party who would offer legal status to undocumented residents, a policy that he calls amnesty.

Last week, Barletta, citing a Heritage Foundation report from 2007, said most undocumented Latinos have low skills and might not have graduated from high school. He believes they will support Democratic candidates, who promise social welfare programs, while Republicans led by Sen. John McCain said their party has to start courting the votes of Latinos with more lenient immigration policies.

Amilcar Arroyo, publisher of the Spanish language newspaper Molinegocios USA in Hazleton, said he will suggest that Barletta stop making comments like that about Latinos. “And he is a good friend of mine,” Arroyo added.

“The GOP party knows they have to be a little bit more open-minded,” Arroyo said. “The Latino electorate is growing. If they are more friendly, they can get a piece of the cake.”

Victor Perez of the Dominican House of Hazleton, a group that challenged Hazleton law, wonders if Barletta is stuck in the past.

“His mind is in the same time when he was fighting... We can’t continue in 2006. We don’t want to talk about that,” said Perez, who instead wants to discuss “what we can do to fix the problem.”

Perez said Dominican House leads classes that help legal immigrants earn citizenship. Tutors all have college degrees, and the class materials, offered in English and Spanish, include a quote from President Harry S. Truman, who said being an American is about more than knowing where you and your parents came from. “It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.”

“If we are equal, why is Mr. Barletta talking like we are not equals?” Perez said.

He said he can understand why the federal government might want to deport “the bad apples,” but “what are you going to do with the millions of good apples?”

Franklin Rivera, interviewed downtown during a day off from a plastics plant where he works in the Humboldt Industrial Park, said people share the same ambitions regardless of their immigration status.

“There’s a lot of them working pretty much the same as us,” Rivera said.

He knows one undocumented worker, trained as a dentist, who lived in the state for 12 years and is scared to go out after work. He sends money to his home country.

Rivera questioned the wisdom of spending tax dollars to find and deport a worker like that, who, if given legal status, would pay taxes and invest more in America, Rivera said.

Those who work “under the table, get cash. The states don’t need that. Without the taxes, we don’t have cops, firemen,” he said.

Lou Barletta-- Face Of The KKK, Face Of The GOP, Face Of America's Dysfunctional Political System

I once lived in Monroe County, PA. Nice, all-American area, currently represented by thoughtful progressive freshman Matt Cartwright. But when I lived there, Monroe County was part of the 11th CD, represented by one of the worst Democratic banking shills, Paul Kanjorski, who was elected in 1984, grew more and more corrupt (and powerful), and was finally dumped in 2010 by Democrats too sick of him to bother going to the polls. It would have been impossible for anyone with any degree of self-respect to vote for a crook like Kanjorski. Aside from being an NRA Democrat, anti-gay, anti-Choice, and pro-war voters were becoming aware that Kanjorski was using his senior position on the House Financial Services Committee to enrich himself and his family. In 2010 Democrats nearly ousted him in a primary but "almost" doesn't count and Pennsylvania's most preeminent racist, Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta beat Kanjorski in the general election, 55-45%. (Barletta only took 54% in Monroe County.)

Hazleton is a small city (population 25,340) in Luzerne County and Barletta had a fairly undistinguished career working for his family's business after doing poorly in school and then failing to make it as a professional baseball player. He finally made a fortune by contracting highway work from the government. He was elected mayor of Hazleton in 1999, where he sang a one note song-- a vicious jihad against Hispanics.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania yesterday struck down ordinances adopted by the City of Hazleton to bar illegal immigrants from working or renting homes there, the most resounding legal blow so far to local efforts across the country to crack down on illegal immigration.

The decision, by Judge James M. Munley of Federal District Court, presents a new roadblock to local officials who want to take action against illegal immigration after broad federal legislation to address the issue failed in the Senate last month.

Judge Munley ruled that ordinances first passed last July by the Hazleton City Council interfered with federal law, which regulates immigration, and violated the due process rights of employers, landlords and illegal immigrants.

The ruling resonated beyond Hazleton because the town was the first in the country to pass such measures, after its mayor, Louis J. Barletta, vowed last year to make the city “one of the toughest places in the United States” for illegal immigrants. Many other local initiatives were modeled on Hazleton’s ordinances, which were never put into effect because of the legal challenge.

“Whatever frustrations officials of the City of Hazleton may feel about the current state of immigration enforcement,” Judge Munley wrote in the 206-page decision, “the nature of the political system in the United States prohibits the city from enacting ordinances that disrupt a carefully drawn federal statutory scheme.”

Mr. Barletta said the city would appeal and would fight to the United States Supreme Court if necessary.

“I will not sit back because the federal government has refused to do its job,” Mr. Barletta said at a news conference on the steps of City Hall.

Judge Munley reached his conclusion after a full hearing of the issues in a bench trial, the first such trial in the various legal challenges to local ordinances restricting illegal immigration. The challenge was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and Cozen O’Connor, a private law firm.

The judge emphasized that illegal immigrants had the same civil rights as legal immigrants and citizens.

...Mr. Barletta, the Hazleton mayor, has championed the city’s ordinances because he said illegal immigrants had unleashed a crime wave in Hazleton and had overburdened health and other public services.

At the nine-day trial in March, A.C.L.U. lawyers worked as hard to debunk those claims as they did to undercut the city’s legal arguments. They showed that 4 of 428 violent crimes in Hazleton in the last six years could be attributed to illegal immigrants.

Barletta and his racist allies on the city council passed an ordinance giving themselves the authority to fine landlords up to $1,000 for leasing to illegal immigrants-- as well as making English the official language of Hazleton, prohibiting city employees from translating documents into any language without official authorization, which sat badly with Puerto Rican American citizens.

So why bring up Barletta? Well, you can probably imagine that the immigration debate has stirred the wild beast in him. Yesterday it sprung into action. At a time when the Republican Party is trying to make nice with Hispanic voters, Congressman Lou Barletta is... going rogue.

Avowed immigration hardliner Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) announced his immediate opposition on Monday to a bipartisan Senate framework on comprehensive immigration reform, suggesting that it could be serving as an ill-advised Republican olive branch to Latino voters.

Barletta went on to say that the GOP should have no interest in providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, claiming that most are uneducated, government-dependent individuals who wouldn't support the party.

"I hope politics is not at the root of why we're rushing to pass a bill. Anyone who believes that they're going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken," Barletta said, according to the Morning Call. "The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on."

..."It's amnesty that America can't afford," Barletta said. "We have to stop people from coming in illegally. This will be a green light for anyone who wants to come to America illegally and then be granted citizenship one day."

Looks like Barletta either didn't get the message, ignored it or... shot the messenger. Jed Lewison at Daily Kos shared the GOP message on how to talk about immigrants.

A top Hispanic Republican advocacy group co-chaired by Jeb Bush is so worried about how the GOP will respond to immigration reform that they are distributing a set of guidelines instructing congressional Republicans on how to discuss the topic without sounding like a bunch of neanderthals. The issue, according to the group, isn't really about substance. Instead, it's about using "tonally sensitive" language:
"Tone and rhetoric will be key in the days and weeks ahead as both liberals and conservatives lay out their perspectives. Please consider these tonally sensitive messaging points as you discuss immigration, regardless of your position," Hispanic Leadership Network Executive Director Jennifer Korn writes.

Before you even read word one from the memo, the fact that the group is more concerned about how congressional Republicans talk about the issue than how they vote on it is a pretty clear indication of just how backwards Republicans are on this topic. Usually in politics, advocacy groups try to achieve actual policy priorities. Here, they are just trying to stop their party from acting like assholes—and based on some of their advice, they must really think there's a lot of assholes in their party. For example, on their list of "messaging dos and don'ts for immigration reform," they say:

Don’t use phrases like “send them all back”

And:

Don’t characterize all Hispanics as undocumented and all undocumented as Hispanics.

Had the Democratic Party not tolerated the gross corruption of Paul Kanjorski-- of course, now a sleazy lobbyist-- Barletta would never have won in 2010. That's our Beltway system. (I'm not certain of this but I believe that the Judge Munley who ruled against Barletta's anti-immigrant ordinance is Congressman Matt Cartwright's father-in-law.)