Lunch Anyone? How DC Works... At Least On The Right-Wing Fringe

Over the weekend, the L.A. Times reported on a Park City, Utah GOP big donor retreat hosted by Mitt Romney. The big donors are frustrated that their party has veered off the track-- keeping wealthy people's taxes low and undermining business regulations-- so gigantically into social issues. It's the old GOP tension between the Greed and Selfishness wing of the party and the Hatred and Bigotry wing of the party.

[N]o group is more frustrated by the party's slow march forward than the high-powered donors and business, technology and industry leaders who met for a three-day retreat here hosted by former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Looking ahead to the 2014 congressional races and the 2016 presidential contest, many Romney donors said they were concerned about the ease with which sharply conservative Republican candidates-- such as Todd Akin of Missouri, who churned up a firestorm with his controversial comments on rape-- had tainted the party's image.

A number of donors also said damage persisted from Romney's shift to the right on issues such as illegal immigration and his emphasis on his opposition to gay marriage.

"We have to open the tent to a broader constituency," said Anthony Scaramucci, a national finance co-chairman who helped lead Romney's fundraising operations in New York.

"The party needs to tie itself to social inclusion and fiscal responsibility. That means any race, any creed, any sexual orientation, any issue related to the reproductive power of women-- any of those groups need to feel at home in the Republican Party," Scaramucci said.

Susan Crown, a 2008 supporter of President Obama who became a key fundraiser for Romney, said that "the extremists-- the 2% on either end-- were the squeaky wheels that dictated the conversation."

The party, she said, "really has to reconcile its fundamental principle, of government staying out of the people's lives, with its recent history."

The views expressed by many donors in interviews this week about the direction the party should take stood in stark contrast to the current concerns of the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, who determine the party platform and its rules.

At an RNC gathering this spring in Hollywood, committee Chairman Reince Priebus had hoped to keep the focus on the party's rebuilding efforts after being vastly outmanned by Obama's campaign operation, including the Democrats' sophisticated voter identification systems and the strength of their ground organization in the key swing states.

Instead, many RNC members wanted to talk about how the party should not stray from its core principles on social issues, which remain singularly important to many party activists. During the meeting, RNC members unanimously pushed through a resolution affirming that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

If party leaders are skittish about having a messaging fight right now, that is not the case for many former Romney donors, who seemed eager to discuss how the party should alter its message attract more women and Latinos.

Romney famously advanced the idea of "self-deportation" in the primary, to his detriment among Latinos. But many of his donors said they were encouraged by movement on an immigration bill in the Senate.

The conversations last year about deporting more than 11 million illegal immigrants were harmful to Republican efforts, said Andrew Puzder, the California-based chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc. He noted that mass deportation would require an enormous expansion of government, which to him seemed antithetical to Republican views.

"We're losing for a policy that we couldn't even implement," Puzder said in an interview in Park City. "We have to be more careful with our selection of candidates."

(Even as the donors talked up the bipartisan bill last week, House GOP members sent a difference message, voting to de-fund Obama's effort to give legal status to immigrants brought to the country as children.)

As for the 2016 messaging, potential contenders who came to woo Romney donors in Park City all emphasized the need for the party to become more inclusive.

I suspect that not many of the folks at Romney's Park City gabfest are regular participants at the regular Wednesday lunch where the Republican Party's actual walking orders are written and implemented every week-- the Weyrich Lunch. In his new book, The Machine, Lee Fang, exposed the history and operations of the Wednesday Weyrich Lunch and how it took over from the more-Big Money-oriented Grover Norquist breakfasts as the Bush Administration faded. The Lunch was founded in 1983 to connect Republican politicians and their staffers to "key movers and shakers of the right."

[U]nlike Norquist’s breakfast meeting, the Weyrich Lunch is dominated by social conservatives and firebreathing reactionaries who place ideological purity over making the conservative “team bigger,” as Norquist would say. The lunch mirrors the sensibilities of its namesake, who was known as “the Robespierre of the right” for his eager purges of moderate Republicans. Sponsors of the lunch include the rabidly conservative 60 Plus Association, a front group posturing as a right-wing alternative to the AARP; Let Freedom Ring, a group funded partially by John Templeton Jr., a billionaire heir and promoter of evangelical causes; the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, an extremist Catholic organization; Judicial Watch, the Right to Work Committee, the powerful evangelical lobby; the Family Research Council, James Dobson’s political organization; and several other groups forming the traditional right-wing coalition. Republican lawmakers giving speeches at the Lunch have been dressed down and forced to explain any bipartisan votes or other moves perceived as violating right-wing values. A 2004 National Review article about the general atmosphere of the lunch described it as “more inquisitorial that at Norquist’s meeting”:

A congressman is hauled over the coals for pondering a run for the Senate and thereby losing a place on a key committee. Bullied about an upcoming vote on school vouchers in the District of Columbia, a senator promises to provide the names of his colleagues who might be “a little wobbly.”. . . Every piece of paper at the Weyrich meeting is also a call to arms. Two-thirds of all partial-birth abortions are committed in New Jersey! Half of all marriages end in divorce! Girls Gone Wild videos are for sale in supermarkets!

The lunch may seem like a throwback to the culture wars of the nineties, or for that matter, the sixties, but post-Bush, it has reemerged as the main get-together for crafting the conservative agenda.

After Weyrich’s death on December 18, 2008, the Leadership Institute’s Morton Blackwell and Let Freedom Ring leader Colin Hanna took over as the chairmen of the lunch. Before, Norquist commanded power because of his close relationship with Karl Rove and other key Bush administration political figures. During that period, operatives would focus on attending the Norquist breakfast and only later that day attend the Weyrich Lunch if they needed to work on an issue related to conservative social values, like marriage or abortion. However, more and more conservatives now flock every Wednesday to a small D.C. Christian coffeehouse called Ebeneezer’s, the venue for the Weyrich Lunch, as the prime destination for organizing opposition to Obama.

The growing prominence of the Weyrich Lunch has affected crucial political developments in the Obama era. Several groups closely associated with the lunch, including the 60 Plus Association, the Family Research Council, and the Susan B. Anthony List, ran millions of dollars’ worth of ads during the health reform fight-- using donor money that might have otherwise gone to Norquist-related organizations in the Bush era.

Republican elected leaders have also gravitated more and more to the lunch. During the first two years of the Obama administration, Representative Mike Pence (R-IN), then the third most powerful Republican in the House, promised to attend every single meeting of the lunch to update the members about the activity in the GOP caucus, legislative fights, and what to expect that week. If he could not attend, he also pledged that he would send either Representative John Boehner (R-OH), then the minority leader, or Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), the Republican whip, as his replacement. Indeed, after Republicans seized the House in 2010, GOP leadership sent a representative-- often a freshman lawmaker-- to the meeting every week.

...The influence of the Lunch has played out behind the scenes in Republican primary battles. When Congressman Pete Sessions, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), came to the Weyrich Lunch, Politico reported that he was angrily confronted by attendees for supporting Dede Scozzafava, a moderate Republican running in a special election in upstate New York. Sessions’s NRCC had donated well over $1 million to Scozzafava, a popular upstate New York assemblywoman. “There were some raised voices,” observed an anonymous source at the lunch. But unlike any ordinary band of hard right activists upset with the Republican establishment, the Weyrich Lunch members were prepared to back up their words with action. Groups associated with the lunch threatened to withhold money from the NRCC, and several of the regular lunch attendees launched a smear campaign attacking Scozzafava with an avalanche of ads and robo-calls in the district. The Susan B. Anthony List, for example, sent staffers into the district and attacked Scozzafava as an “abortion radical” and claimed her candidacy jeopardized the “lives of women and their unborn babies.” Scozzafava eventually suspended her campaign the weekend before the election and endorsed her opponent, Democrat Bill Owens. On election day, the longtime Republican district fell to Owens over the Weyrich Lunch and Tea Party favorite in the race, New York Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Nonetheless, Weyrich Lunch attendees celebrated the electoral defeat as a success. Scozzafava favored some abortion rights and was less antiunion than most Republicans. The election of a Democrat over such a moderate Republican kept the party, and the movement, more ideologically pure. A Washington Post account of the Conservative Action Project and the Weyrich Lunch noted that at the Redstate morning briefing, blogger Erick Erickson’s widely distributed daily e-mail newsletter of talking points helped ensure that the wider right-wing movement stuck to the argument that Scozzafava’s loss was actually a good thing for conservatives.

Before the Scozzafava campaign fiasco, Republican Party planners had pinned their 2010 midterm election prospects on a cadre of moderate, even liberal, Republicans who could appeal to independent voters and disaffected Democrats. Republican strategists for the Senate organized endorsements and support for Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, the only Republican governor to openly embrace President Obama’s stimulus, for his bid to the Senate. Similarly, the same establishment party strategists were openly building the campaign infrastructure for former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton, another moderate, to run for Senate. The planners, more focused on electoral victory than conservative purity, ignored non-mainstream candidates like Tea Party–backed Republican Marco Rubio, who vied for the Republican nomination in Florida, and Ken Buck, another far-right primary candidate in Colorado. But the Scozzafava effect sent shock waves through the GOP, and shortly after November 2009, Republican Party candidate committees pledged to stay neutral.

Rubio gained steam by directly addressing many of the Weyrich Lunch sponsors at a Council for National Policy summit in Naples, Florida, in March 2010. Maggie Gallagher, an audience member for Rubio’s speech and former president of the antigay National Organization for Marriage, gushed “when Rubio speaks, he is not spinning—he is weaving together from his life story, in his person as well as his words, the frayed threads of the old Reagan coalition.” Gallagher had been active in purging Scozzafava, and called for conservatives to rebuke the moderate Crist. Norton and dozens of other moderate GOP nominees for Congress would later go down in crushing primary election defeats to far more radical Republican candidates. Crist avoided the embarrassment of a loss to Rubio by bolting the party altogether and running as an independent. In the end, Rubio easily won his election. While many forces-- especially the influence of talk radio and Fox News-- affected the outcome of Republican primaries, the Weyrich Lunch–drawn line in the sand against moderate Republicans reverberated in campaigns across the country.

The most prominent, and underreported, example of Weyrich Lunch influence was its role in elevating radical right Senate candidates in Delaware and Alaska. Early in 2010, a parade of far-right challengers hoping to upset Republican establishment-ordained candidates for Senate visited D.C.-- and specifically the Weyrich Lunch-- to find support. In Delaware, the Republican establishment sought Representative Mike Castle (R-DE), one of the most moderate members of the entire Republican caucus, to run for Senate. Every poll showed him beating any leading Democrat in the state, including New Castle County Executive Chris Coons and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the son of the vice president. However, a local antiabortion activist named Christine O’Donnell-- known primarily for her status as a perennial fringe candidate-- went to the Weyrich Lunch for support.

O’Donnell had known the Weyrich Lunch leaders through her work leading the abstinence group The Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, and the Weyrich Lunch supporters admired her staunch right-wing positions, particularly in contrast to Castle. Quietly, before any other national groups entered the race, the Family Research Council sent organizers into Delaware to reach out to local Tea Party groups and to build O’Donnell’s candidacy. In August of 2010, the bombastic Tea Party organizing group Tea Party Express endorsed O’Donnell and led a highly publicized primary effort to help her win the nomination. Similarly, attorney Joe Miller, a friend of Sarah Palin, visited the Weyrich Lunch early in 2010 to lock up support in his primary campaign against incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak). Again, after a friendly reception at the Weyrich Lunch, the Family Research Council dispatched organizers and resources to help Miller win his race. Family Research Council operatives worked with local evangelical groups to tie supporters of a ballot initiative requiring parent notification of teenage abortions to the candidate. Both O’Donnell and Miller won stunning upsets against their more moderate Republican primary opponents.

In both cases, the Tea Party Express claimed credit for the primary victories of newcomers like O’Donnell and Miller. But the true initial support came from the Weyrich Lunch. When Weyrich Lunch chairman Colin Hanna explained his strategy in September of 2010, he believed that both O’Donnell and Miller could win their general elections. He had personally recorded a radio ad mocking Murkowski as a “Queen” for not bowing out of the race after her primary loss (she continued to run as a write-in candidate). However, in the end both Miller and O’Donnell went down in spectacularly crushing defeats-- Murkowski won a historic write-in campaign, and Democrat Chris Coons sailed to victory in Delaware. The Weyrich Lunch could flex its muscle, but its strength also undermined Republican efforts to regain control of the Senate in 2010.

Extremely conservative Republican politicians, like Senator Jim Inhofe, Congressman Louie Gohmert, and Virginia attorney general ken Cuccinelli, are reportedly close to the Weyrich Lunch and the Conservative Action Project. Inhofe, on several occasions, has addressed the Weyrich meeting to explain issues ranging from judicial appointments to environmental issues. Inhofe takes a particularly hard-line conservative position on both subject areas. He announced that he would oppose Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan before hearings were even scheduled, and has earned a reputation for fighting tooth and nail against every attempt to address climate change. Several years before Obama’s presidency, Inhofe was alone in the Senate in asserting that climate change is a complete “hoax.” However, Inhofe’s views had become the conservative status quo by the end of 2009. A study compiled by climate activist and blogger Brad Johnson found that over half of the Republican class of 2010 did not believe in climate science.

The Weyrich Lunch and its affiliated meetings and groups provided a nexus for right-wing front groups organizing the Tea Parties to collaborate with other conservative groups and corporate fronts. FreedomWorks, one of the premier groups organizing Tea Parties, sent its vice president Matt Kibbe, campaign director Brendan Steinhauser, and New Media Director Tabitha Hale to different Weyrich Lunch meetings. Americans for Prosperity, the other major group dedicated to mobilizing Tea Party protests, had its director Tim Phillips attend many Conservative Action Project strategy breakfasts. Several other Tea Party groups, like Liberty Central, the “grassroots” conservative group founded by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas, were regular participants in the Weyrich-related sessions. Essentially every new conservative advocacy group relied on the Weyrich Lunch membership to branch out and coordinate its efforts.

Although there are billionaires who dictate policy within the Democratic Party-- particularly Wall Street billionaires-- there is no mechanism within the Democratic grassroots that has anything like the power of the Weyrich Lunch to keep corrupt Beltway Establishment groups-- in their case, say the RNC and the NRCC, the Democrats' the DNC and the DCCC-- in check. Watch how that plays out during the midterms next year, when the DCCC goes down in flames again.

You, Me, Dede, And NY-23... Oh, Yeah, And Newt And Issa

I don't know about you, but if I were Rep. Steve Israel, Senator Chuck Schumer or general all-around sleaze bucket Rahm Emanuel and I had just cut a deal with Dede Scozzafava to toss a lifetime of Republicanness away for some as yet undelineated bribe, one of the last people I would feed that info to would be anyone whose Rolodex even contained the phone number of weepy Republican blabbermouth Darrell Issa. But Issa claimed on TV yesterday that "top Democrats... promised her favors in return for her endorsement of the remaining Democratic candidate."

Issa also called on Republicans to donate promptly to Hoffman's war chest so that the party writ large could "send a message to Barack Obama that he can't buy this election."

Right-wing front organizations and hate groups have pumped over $4 million dollars into this race so far. Issa himself, who had originally endorsed Scozzafava, became frightened with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the other pipers wishy-washy Republicans like Issa dance to and switched his allegiance to Hoffman late in the game.

Issa and other right-wing extremists keep referring to "Democrat" Bill Owens as a "leftist." If only! On many issues-- primarily social-- he is significantly to the right of Scozzafava. Overall, though, his kind of cautious and turgid reactionary bent puts him closer to Scozzafava than Hoffman is. Except for her lifelong fealty to the Republican Party, her endorsement of Owens yesterday shouldn't come as a surprise. And if she winds up switching parties, no doubt Sheldon Silver and Andrew Cuomo are going to be delighted to welcome her onboard.

Since announcing the suspension of my campaign, I have thought long and hard about what is best for the people of this District, and how to answer your questions. This is not a decision that I have made lightly.

You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically. Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it's about the people of this District.

It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.

It's not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh's lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress. John and I worked together on the expansion of Fort Drum, and I know how important that base is to the economy of this region. I am confident that Bill will be able to provide the leadership and continuity of support to Drum Country just as John did during his tenure in Congress.

In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York. Bill understands this district and its people, and when he represents us in Congress he will put our interests first.

Please join me in voting for Bill Owens on Tuesday. To address the tough challenges ahead, we must rise above partisanship and politics and work together. There's too much at stake in this election to do otherwise.

When Lieberman endorsed McCain over Obama last year, viciously smearing his younger Senate protege during the campaign, it was widely rumored that McCain had promised to make him Secretary of State or Defense. Perhaps that's where Issa came up with the idea of a quid pro quo. Maybe, though, Scozzafava endorsed him for the precise reasons she laid out. Hoffman's extreme teabagger approach to politics is antithetic to everything a mainstream politician like Scozzafava has always stood for. The fact that he couldn't answer a single question the Watertown Times editorial board asked him about local issues certainly made her cringe. And it made her-- and plenty of others-- realize he's just the candidate of the hate-filled angry cable TV viewers who get their opinions from Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.

Scozzafava's late nod to Owens could spell trouble for Hoffman, who is statistically deadlocked with his Democratic opponent in recent polls. The New York assemblywoman is considerably more moderate than Hoffman -- and presumably, some of her supporters are too -- so the possibility that many of her prospective voters could gravitate toward Owens on Tuesday is not totally unfathomable.

Nevertheless, Scozzafava's decision on Sunday is bound to infuriate Republicans, many of whom announced within hours of her suspension that they backed Hoffman and hoped soon to welcome him into their caucus. The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a host of party leaders urged their members to do the same, in part to defeat the growing meme that Republicans were warring among themselves about the NY-23 race.

Scozzafava, however, stressed on Sunday that her endorsement was about her district's well being, not her party's appearance. She urged supporters to head to the polls on Tuesday to support Owens because he, more than Hoffman, could best represent Watertown's interests.

Fox, of course, has been lying for two days, assuring all the sheeple that Scozzafava had endorsed Hoffman or was withdrawing to make sure he'd win. And the sheeple insist Fox is a legitimate news source rather than a belief system for the emotionally unbalanced. Tomorrow's the day for NY-23. But the Republican Party problem with their obstreperous extreme right will haunt them for the next several years. Fox isn't going away-- nor is all the hatred and bigotry they spew all day and all night. The teabaggers feel empowered, and the Republican "leadership" feels cowed.

The next scalp they're looking for is Florida Governor Charlie Crist-- and they're likely to get it, as his campaign falters and Marco Rubio's surges, at least among teabagger activists and the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. That same lunatic fringe is likely to push mainstream conservatives out of primaries in Ohio (Steve Stivers), Kentucky (Trey Grayson), Virginia (Bob Hurt), and Alabama (Martha Roby) in favor of right-wing ideologues (David Ryon, Rand Paul, Bradley Rees and Rob John) who will find it far more difficult to appeal to mainstream voters than to the deranaged Republican Party base. Stock up on the popcorn; there'll be a lot more funny tapdancing like this Fox/Newt Gingrich hilarity below:

Snatching Defeat Out Of The Jaws Of Victory-- Republican vs Republican

Will Bloody Kansas be the next battlefield in the GOP civil war?

NY-23, up near Montreal in northeast New York, has more cows than people-- and more Republicans than Democrats. The Inside-the-Beltway and national media have jumped into the race, marveling at how the GOP is managing to screw up their chances there with a vicious intraparty civil war. Watch the video below of Beck calling for a right-wing jihad against the Republican Party establishment in the name of teabaggery, and keep in mind that he still has one full week for a full-on Vicks VapoRub weeping session before the balloting is over. Even more important to remember, though, is that NY-23 isn't the only congressional race shaping up to be a showcase for the struggle between mainstream conservatives and the unhinged, Hate Talk-inspired teabaggers trying to capture the GOP.

The U.S. Senate race in Florida between the Establishment candidate, Gov. Charlie Crist, and a mediocre but charismatic right-wing insurgent, Marco Rubio, has been the most high-profile example. Among the far right fringe of the GOP, Charlie Crist has been transformed into America's worst governor (worse than Mark Sanford and Arnold Schwarzenegger!), and Republican elected officials are at cross-purposes in choosing a horse to back. Rubio, the darling of the teabaggers, has won every single county Republican straw poll-- and each one by a landslide. The farthest-right members of the GOP congressional delegation have jumped on his bandwagon, while the slightly less extremist ones are sticking with Crist. Nationally, the split is apparent when you notice that Senate Minority Leader Miss McConnell and NRSC Chair John Cornyn are backing Crist while radical right fringe operators like Jim DeMint and Mike Huckabee are on the warpath for Rubio.

Another Republican race where the split is rending the GOP into warring camps is in Kansas. With Sam Brownback giving up his Senate seat to ascend to the state's governorship-- presumably a better perch to launch a presidential race from-- two very conservative Kansas congressmen, Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt, are at each other's throats for the Senate nomination. Moran is viewed as slightly more mainstream and Tiahrt as slightly more extremist. Tiahrt's lifetime ProgressivePunch score is 2.25, and his score this year is 2.13, while Moran is trying to make up for his 5.07 lifetime score with a big fat zero-point-zero-zero this year. But such minutiae is the stuff that motivates your average dittohead and teabagger. Right-wing loon Rick Santorum is backing Tiahart while John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Mike Johanns, afraid that their party is falling off an ideological cliff, are behind Moran.

If, as most observers expect, the rift in NY-23 results in a victory for Democrat Bill Owens-- who basically has nothing going for himself other than the Scozzafava v. Hoffman feud-- the entrails of defeat will be picked over closely, and each side will determine, probably within minutes, that they will need to fight even harder-- against their fellow Republicans, in Florida, Kansas, South Carolina, Texas and dozens of other races across the country. I bet Rahm Emanuel would love to take credit for this fortuitous development. OK, as promised... it's Glenn Beck time:




UPDATE: Word From The Lunatic Fringe

The Senate's most extremist member, Jim DeMint, just endorsed Hoffman. I wonder how many voters in upstate New York will make up their minds based on the hysterical urgings of a racist and secessionist from South Carolina.

Progress Report From The Republican Civil War Front

I don't know a single progressive that wants to see conservative Democrat Bill Owens in Congress. He's likely to turn out to be as disappointing as Scott Murphy, a businessman we were assured believes in Democratic values. Murphy's voting record puts him so far at the bottom of the barrel that there's a Republican, Louisiana's Rodney Alexander, voting more consistently with Nancy Pelosi than he does-- and only one Democrat, neo-Confederate Blue Dog Parker Griffith of Alabama, voting in a more reactionary way. On the other hand, all the Democrats I know are enjoying the spectacle of a high-profile Republican civil war pitting the surging teabagger end of the GOP-- including Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Pence, Dick Armey, Rick Santorum, Todd Tiahrt-- against a limp Republican Party Establishment that includes Scozzafava supporters John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Lindsey Graham, Pete Sessions, John McCain, Susan Collins, Ginny Brown-Waite, Thaddeus McCotter, Newt Gingrich, and Peter King. Many Republicans-- from Tom Price and Mitt Romney to Tim Pawlenty-- are curled up in balls under their respective beds, avoiding taking a stand.

With the GOP having abdicated its messaging in favor of Hate Talk Radio and TV hosts-- from Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter and O'Reilly to Savage, Ingraham and whatever kook crawls out of the woodwork to call Obama Hitler, the party is now stuck with a pack of jackals more interested in goosing ratings points and ad revenues by being controversial than in doing anything that will help the Republican Party start to recover from its own ratings problems-- only 19% of Americans trust the GOP and only 20% of voters consider themselves Republicans.

Financially, the party of Big Business, Greed and Selfishness, is having no problem raising money for congressional candidates for next year's midterms. But the specter of loads of primaries between mainstream conservatives and neo-fascist teabaggers is an absolute joy to watch. Even higher profile than the Scozzafava-Hoffman brouhaha in upstate New York-- which appears to be leading to the election of a Democrat in that district for the first time since the U.S. Civil War-- is the U.S. Senate race in Florida. Once considered a shoe-in for Gov. Charlie Crist, the NRSC and the Inside the Beltway Establishment is catatonic as far right extremist Marco Rubio wipes Crist out in every single GOP straw poll in every single Florida county. Rubio has captured the soul of the Florida Republican Party and is looking like he has a shot at the impossible-- capturing the Republican nomination, the effective of which will be to give an otherwise hopeless and mediocre Democrat a chance to take a red seat.

Several Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats have all but abandoned the electoral coalitions that helped get them into office and have pursued conservative voters by spending most of their time on the Republican side of the aisle. Quasi-Democrats like Glenn Nye (VA), Bill Foster (IL), Zack Space (OH), Parker Griffith (AL), Harry Mitchell (AZ), Walt Minnick (ID) and Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ) are all weak candidates who have been following the Don Cazayoux formula towards political extinction. If any of these reactionaries winds up in Congress in 2011 it will be because of the intra-party Republican bloodletting that often puts crazed teabaggers at the throats of mainstream conservatives. Two wealthy businessmen, Scott Rigell and Ben Loyola, are spending over to a million dollars in a primary battle that is benefiting only Blue Dog Glenn Nye. In the suburbs west of Chicago where Denny Hastert once ruled supreme his son Ethan was once considered the perfect candidate to take out conservative Democrat Bill Foster. Now it looks like Hastert will be lucky if he beats a right-wing state Senator, Randy Hultgren. Similarly two extremist loons in Alabama, Les Phillip and Mo Brooks, each considered a 3rd or 4th tier candidate, is hoping to knock out the other to get a shot at supremely unpopular Blue Dog Parker Griffith.

In California two far right Vietnamese-American Republicans, Van Tran and Quang Pham are pouring money into beating each other up while Blue Dog Loretta Sanchez looks more and more untouchable by the day. And in the U.S. Senate race against Barbara Boxer, extremist Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, is fighting it out with failed corporatist Carly Fiorina for the relatively worthless Republican nomination. Fiorina will likely spend several million dollars from her Hewlett Packard severence pacakge to defeat the teabaggers.



UPDATE: Pawlenty Wants To Show The Teabaggers He's One Of Them-- Endorses Hoffman In NY-23

Tim Pawlenty, a full time GOP presidential candidate, ignoring Minnesota's problems completely, first passed on endorsing anyone in the NY-23 congressional race-- I mean who in upstate NY ever heard of Tim Pawlenty or cares who he thinks their representative should be (as long as it isn't himself)?-- and today came out, limply, for the third party candidate against Republican Dede Scozzafava. The NRCC, which has already put almost $850,000 into the campaign on Scozzafava's behalf, still believes she can win and one insider has told friends that there is a lot of fuming that a "pack of self-serving Benedict Arnolds are fucking over this party" to make points with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

A Method To What Appears To Be Republican Party Madness

Certainly the unseemly spectacle in NY-23 would have horrified your grandpa's Republican Party. (My grandpa was a Socialist and he would have been delighted.) First it was just a few kooks like Club For Growth, Fred Thompson and Mike Pence who were refusing to back Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, the official Republican Party nominee to replace John McHugh as the Representative from the sprawling upstate district that is famous for having more cows than people. But then the noisiest and most mean-spirited factions in the shrinking Republican pup tent jumped in, the Hate Talk hosts, Dick Armey's Astroturf-for-hire outfit, the fascist-oriented bloggers, the teabaggers and, on cue, Sarah Palin. This puts them directly at odds with the Party Establishment, something that's been happening more and more frequently in a party that's always been the button-down and topdown party. The national leadership, led-- lamely, by John Boehner, Pete Sessions, Eric Pence, Newt Gingrich, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Michael Steele-- are all backing Scozzafava and helping finance her campaign. The teabaggers, the Hate Talkers and Palin are in open revolt and are pouring money into the campaign of the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, something likely to result in a victory for Democrat Bill Owens.

Gingrich laid it out to the teabagger set-- who have reviled him since he endorsed Scozzafava last week: "The choice in New York is a practical one: We can split the conservative vote and guarantee the election of a Democrat in a Republican seat in a substantial loss of opportunity. Or we can find a way to elect someone who has committed to vote for the Republican leader, has committed to vote against all tax increases, has committed to vote against cap-and-trade, and is a strong ally of the NRA." The teabaggers don't care. They've been told Scozzafava, who none of them had ever heard of a week and a half ago, must be defeated and now they're on the march, filled with righteous indignation and ready to kill someone. Same in Florida, where mainstream conservative Charlie Crist-- a sure bet to hold onto the open red Senate seat-- is going to be defeated in a GOP primary that, in effect, hands the Florida Senate seat to a very mediocre Democrat, Kendrick Meek. The teabaggers, like zombies, cannot be reasoned with.

Rasmussen, for all intents and purposes a subsidiary of the GOP, reported yesterday that 73% of Republican voters say that Republicans in Congress have lost touch with the base. Only 15% of Republicans planning to vote in 2012 primaries say the GOP members of Congress have done a good job representing Republican values. And meanwhile, not a single national Republican polls as well as McCain did against Obama in 2012 match-up.

But the commotion in NY-23 is nothing compared to the level of noise and seemingly mindless chaos that the Republicans have been creating since Obama was elected. Even before he was sworn in Jon Kyl was threatening to filibuster all his appointments, Rush Limbaugh was leading the right-wing faithful in a national revival meeting predicated on doing everything under the sun to cause Obama to fail, and clowns like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage were running along screaming, "me too, me too," trying to earn ratings points by acting more outrageous than anyone else. These people have done all they can to turn the public arena into a disgusting, unsavory spectacle that revolts normal people. Alan Grayson wasn't taking much poetic license when he pointed out a few weeks ago that if President Obama had a BLT for lunch, the Republicans would introduce a bill to outlaw bacon and that if he were to achieve world peace they would go into hysterics how he was out to destroy the American armaments industry. Are their tactics self-defeating? We'll see, of course, but I remember-- and want to share-- a paragraph from Rick Perstein's marvelous book, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. Karl Rove understood very well what "the fracturing of America" meant and how it could be use to prop up the least qualified man to have ever served as president. Is there someone else in Republican circles today-- like some slimy Republican Party operative/Fox News chief Roger Ailes, for example-- waiting in the shadows to pop out the way Nixon did in 1968, "miraculously" disposing of Mitt Romney's front-running father and exploiting the cacophony of a society seeming to be on the verge of falling apart?

This was something Richard Nixon, with his gift for looking below social surfaces to see and exploit the subterranean truths that roiled underneath, understood: the future belonged to the politician who could tap the ambivalence-- the nameless dread, the urge to make it all go away; to make the world placid again, not a cacophonous mess.

Right now the Republicans and their allies at Hate Talk Radio, at Fox News and among the plutocrats who stand to lose the most from any changes in the status quo are doing their best to recreate that kind of chaotic, anti-social cacophony. The Republican "big tent" may have shrunk but it now houses a far more focused-- and deadly-- cabal far more committed to grasping the levers of power than to either playing by the rules or doing what's best for America. Whatever version of God they worship, they see him as being on their side, making anything and everything a means to a divinely-sanctioned end.

Teabaggers vs Mainstream Conservatives-- Wrecking The GOP

Last month we started looking at the special election campaign in the mammoth congressional district in northeast New York (NY-23) to replace John McHugh, who Obama named Army Secretary. The district hasn't sent a Democrat to Congress since the Republicans became a reform-oriented party in the 1860s. It went Republican-- but anti-slave Republican-- and never changed, even though the GOP changed so much that-- thanks to Richard Nixon's and Kevin Phillips' "Southern strategy"-- it has come full circle as the party that actually advocates policies that are both racist and as close to slavery as one can get under the current social constraints against that sort of thing. In the end, we concluded that although the mainstream Republican, Dede Scozzafava, is pro-choice and favors equality for gays, she isn't necessarily a better option than conservative Democrat Bill Owens.

She's good for a Republican and he's pretty piss-poor for a Democrat but in the end, she'll generally vote against working families and he'll generally vote for working families. Either, of course, is preferable to the extreme right-wing fringe loon, Doug Hoffman-- a registered Republican, of course-- that the Conservative Party is running. He's being backed by the teabaggers, the Club for Growth, religionist loon Gary Bauer, all kinds of fringe right-wing outfits, and extremist politicians from out of state like Indiana radical Mike Pence and Tennessee actor Fred Thompson. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal pointed out that teabagger antics like this are wrecking the GOP strategy for an electoral comeback-- and not just in Upstate New York.

Hoffman has siphoned so much support from Ms. Scozzafava that their Democratic rival has vaulted into the lead, according to a poll released Thursday. The election is Nov. 3.

Teabaggers are refusing to support the Republican candidate, and teabagger-oriented extremists in Congress, like Pence, are following their lead, hoping for national notoriety. Yesterday the GOP Establishment rolled out an endorsement by Newt Gingrich in the hope of over-awing the far right but instead they got nothing but ire and vituperation from the extremists. Right wing fanatic Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), who would like to rise in the House Republican leadership, wrote Scozzafava a check and "his conservative base attacked him viciously, specifically harping intimidate details of his personal life."

Right-wing propaganda operations are at war with each other as well. The Weekly Standard, which is more like a tabloid selling stories of Michael Jackson resurrections on Neptune every day, is making the absurd claim-- pulled right out of their asses-- that Scozzafava will switch parties if she wins. And a column by William Kristol in the same rag claims that she isn't even the Republican in the race.

The Wall Street Journal is scared that what's happening in NY-23 is also what's happening around the country, including in high profile campaigns in Florida, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Illinois, and Delaware, where the national GOP leaders want candidates who can win moderates, mainstream and independent voters but where teabaggers are looking for the kind of ideological purity that works wonders in Republican primaries but are suicide in general elections.

"Personally, I'm just as fed up with the Republican Party as the Democratic Party," says Catherina Wojtowicz, coordinator of the Chicago tea-party group. "The Republican Party looks great on paper. But the people who call themselves Republicans, with a few exceptions, have no idea what the party stands for, or don't care."

...The Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative group, has announced it's spending $250,000-- and may spend more-- in support of Mr. Hoffman, depicting Mr. Owens and Ms. Scozzafava as equally contemptible liberals. Mr. Hoffman has attracted the endorsements of several conservative and antiabortion groups.

"The fact that [the tea-party groups are] out there is going to help my candidacy, because there are people just like me that are feeling the same frustrations and the same disappointment with our leadership and doing something about it," says Mr. Hoffman.

OK, It Might Not Be Time To Start Writing Campaign Checks To Dede Scozzafava

Conservative, newly minted DCCC Democrat Bill Owens (NY-23)

A couple days ago I asked a question about supporting a moderate Republican against a conservative Democrat. Most of my friends from Upstate New York have said, essentially, "a pox on both their houses and a worse one on the DCCC for foisting Owens on us." One blogger pal even suggested progressives would be best served if Doug Hoffman, the extremist teabagger, wins the special election so that a real Democrat-- Owens just registered as a Democrat a couple weeks ago and his only political contributions on record have been for Alfonse D'Amato-- could take him out in 2010.

Bill Owens still won't take questions about his policies but the DCCC researched the public record and came up with a prettier picture than anyone has seen of their candidate. They make a credible case that he opposes extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, supports EFCA, is pro-choice, and will support the President’s efforts to fix healthcare.

Given that no one knows exactly what that means, supporting "the President’s efforts to fix healthcare" is pretty weak tea-- but it's better than what we can expect from the worst of the bribe-besoted anti-family Blue Dogs like Parker Griffith and Bobby Bright of Alabama, Travis Childers and Gene Taylor of Mississippi, Mike Ross of Arkansas and Dan Boren of Oklahoma. Owens told a local newspaper that "my job in going to Washington is to support the president in that process."

As for Employee free choice, both Owens and Scozzafava support the bill. Hoffman, of course, despises working families and fervently opposes it. Similarly, Owens and Scozzafava are both pro-choice. Although in the same article Owens clearly states his opposition to a public option in the health care debate; the position he stakes out is 100% based on quintessentially deceptive Republican Party talking points, extolling popular goals without dealing with the difficulties in reaching them:

"It changes every day, the various iterations. The bill that I would vote for would have a couple of elements to it. It would cover the uninsured, it would eliminate the ability to exclude for a pre-existing condition, and also that focuses on cost-reduction."

One Democratic strategist feels the upside of an Owens win is that it will make other conservative Democrats in Congress think its OK to vote for the public option. I guess he isn't "cynical" enough to see that the Blue Dogs have made a decision to vote against the clear interests-- and stated preferences-- of their constituents and in favor of their campaign donors. And Owens' stated opposition to the public option kind of moots that argument anyway.

What Happens When A Republican Candidate Is More Progressive Than The Democrat?

As you probably know, DWT has been active in fighting against the takeover of the Inside the Beltway part of the Democratic Party by conservative elements-- from corporatists (think DLC) to outright reactionaries (think Blue Dogs). One of the problems in tackling these elements is that invariably their Republican opponents are substantially worse than they are! Republicans running against the most right wing Democrats-- from Chris Carney in Pennsylvania and Dan Boren in Oklahoma to Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith in Alabama-- try attacking them as too liberal! We've often wondered what we would do if we found an actual progressive Republican running against a conservative Democrat. Well, we just did!

A few days ago we looked at the November 3 special election coming up to replace longtime Congressman John McHugh who has been appointed Secretary of the Army. It's a complicated race and we're still trying to sort it out, something that isn't helped by the putative Democrats' reluctance to answer any questions about his positions. So let's start with the most recent news-- polling.

Although the Club for Growth, a dangerous extremist organization that works on the fringes of GOP politics, released a bogus poll last month showing a virtual 3-way tie-- and which was widely reported in the local media as though Club for Growth was a normal good faith player-- a real poll was released today by Siena with a more intuitive result:

Dede Scozzafava (Republican) 35%
Bill Owens (Democrat) 28%
Doug Hoffman (Conservative) 16%

The party labels only tell half the story, Scozzafava is the area's Assemblymember and she has a moderate voting record that clearly makes her the socially liberal candidate. Her voting record is pro-choice and pro-marriage equality. In the past she has been endorsed by the Working Families Party and by local labor unions including the SEIU. Bill Owens is the Democratic Party candidate but-- in a scenario reminiscent of the disastrous Tim Mahoney situation of 2006-- he wasn't even a registered Democrat until after he wound up with the nomination. And his conservative political outlook appears well to the right of Scozzafava's. Owens refuses to tell anyone where he specifically stands on anything, although he was happy enough to come out against marriage equality. Meanwhile, Doug Hoffman is a registered Republican who has staked out the angry teabagger extremist end of the GOP vote for himself and has been endorsed by the Club for Growth and the American Conservative Union (as well as by right-wing Tennessee actor Fred Thompson).

Today's Hill points out that "both Owens and Hoffman are slamming Scozzafava for her votes in Albany, with Hoffman calling her a liberal and Democrats portraying her as another vote against President Barack Obama's agenda, should she head to Washington." My guess is that she's probably more likely to vote for Obama's agenda than Owens is.


UPDATE: Not That Scozzafava Is The Bees' Knees

Her actual voting record shows her to be a mainstream conservative-- not a neo-Con or a teabagger-- but one who votes pro-choice and pro-gay equality. I guess part of what's attractive about her is that my sense of Close-To-The-Vest Owens is that he's going to get into Congress and be another crappy conservative Democrat who votes for a Democratic House organization and then abandons the party when it comes to the more substantive stuff. The DCCC says I'm wrong-- but what else would they say?-- and promises evidence tomorrow. Meanwhile a friend in Upstate NY points out that Scozzafava opposes sane gun control laws, isn't always consumer-friendly when their interests conflict with corporate interests, has a corporate attitude towards the environment and a corporate attitude towards campaign finance reform.

This morning at Daily Kos Robert Harding, best known for his great work at The Albany Project, deconstructs the Scozzafava-as-liberal myth and doubts she'd be even as "good" as Susan Collins. He doesn't say much, though, about how to deal with empowering another conservative Democrat and saddling the Democratic Party with someone who will be pulling the caucus ever more rightward. One more thing about Owens, even though he didn't register as a Democrat until a few weeks ago-- after the DCCC had "sold" him the nomination-- that doesn't mean he wasn't politically active. I found two political contributions from a William Owens in Plattsburgh-- one was to Alfonse D'Amato and the other was to... Alfonse D'Amato.

Is the Republican The Most Liberal Candidate In The Three Way Race In Upstate NY's Special Election?

Doug Hoffman & Fred Thompson, wiping out the NY Republican Party

When Republican Congressman John McHugh was confirmed as Secretary of the Army, one of the last 3 House seats held by a Republican in New York state came into play. There will be a special election on November 3 to fill the seat in the North Country (NY-23), a sprawling rural district that went for Obama over McCain 51.8- 46.6%. The PVI (R +0.99) makes it a quintessential swing district, traditionally Republican but trending Democratic despite being one of the most Caucasian districts in the U.S.

Conventional wisdom gives the seat to Dede Scozzafava, a moderate Republican representing much of the area in the state Assembly. The Democrat is businessman/attorney Bill Owens and the Democrats are hoping to reenact the miracle that elected Democratic businessman Scott Murphy (who, I should mention, has gone on to quickly acquire the most reactionary voting record of any Democrat in the House. less in sync with his own party than two Republicans and more in line with hard core Southern conservatives than with real Democrats). But conventional wisdom is shifting.

The GOP is not united behind Scozzafava who is deemed not sufficiently anti-choice or anti-gay to be a good Republican. And national Republicans detect a pro-working family streak in her voting record. They would rather lose the seat than win it with a moderate. So right-wing GOP front groups like The Susan B. Anthony List and the fascist-oriented Club For Growth have joined rightist politicians in endorsing Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, who is a registered Republican, an anti-choice fanatic, a homophobic maniac and a 100% dedicated hater of working families-- perfect for the neo-Confederates and Big Business shills who run the GOP nationally. Tennessee actor and politician Fred Thompson has endorsed Hoffman as "the true conservative" in the race.

Locally this should be a clear formula for a Democratic win-- if there was a real Democrat in the race. Owens is playing his cards close to his chest and won't even say if he's pro-choice or not. So far many Democrats are wondering if the best choice in the election might be Dede Scozzafava who has, in the past, been endorsed by the Working Families Party. Here's Hoffman's TV ad doing the job to defeat the Republican and electing the conservative Democrat:

People Wondering Why John Boehner Was Weeping In Public Again

Avid crier, John Boehner, was at it again: sobbing when the statue-- or, in his case, idol-- of Ronald Reagan was unveiled in Statuary Hall this morning. Or maybe his mind was just wandering towards what today's Politico termed the stealth war to keep moving the GOP along the road to oblivion as a serious national party. It's not so much that the wing-nuts will miss John McHugh (R-NY) or even the likelihood of being embarrassed again when they lose a seat-- after a costly battle they can't afford-- with a tremendous GOP registration advantage (120,887 Democrats to 167,272 Republicans). Obama won the district 52-47% last November.

“Boxing the Republicans into a South-dominated party is very good strategy, because the more you reduce the Republican Party, the more conservative and reactionary it will become, and thus less attractive to moderates,” said Tom Schaller, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County professor and the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South. “The Midwest and the Northeast are the places where there are still remnants of old-line Rockefeller Republicans. And these are the places where the Democrats will build durable majorities.”

The NRCC, sounding a little paranoid, blames the whole thing in Rahm Emanuel. And here I thought I was the only one that blamed everything on him! Last night CQPolitics put out an analysis of the likely contenders to replace McHugh. State Sen. Darrel Aubertine is being mentioned most but if he abandoned his just-won Senate seat, it could through NY Democrats into turmoil because of the closeness of the numbers in Albany. Syracuse-based attorney Daniel French, a former aide to Daniel Patrick Moynihan is another possible candidate, as are 2008 nominee Michael P. Oot, state party Chairwoman June O’Neill and John Rhodes, who considered a 2008 run.

Aubertine, of Watertown, won a 2008 special election for a Senate district based an hour or so from Ottawa, Canada, that covers all of two counties in McHugh’s district and part of a third.

But even an Aubertine victory could be a net loss for national Democrats. New York is set to lose at least one seat in the reapportionment of congressional districts after next year’s census, and his influence in the state Senate may be more valuable to the party than an extra vote in the U.S. House that could disappear after the 2012 election.

For that reason, several Democrats said they thought it was unlikely that Aubertine would run.

“It’s too early to comment right now,” said Aubertine’s spokesman, Drew Mangione. “The senator is committed to his work in the New York state Senate.”

A slew of Republican names also surfaced Tuesday: Assembly members Will Barclay, who lost to Aubertine for the Senate seat, Janet L. Duprey and Dede Scozzafava; Terry Gach, vice president of institutional advancement at the Trudeau Institute; Michael F. Joyce, the head of Hargrave Custom Yachts; former state Sen. Jim Wright; and Franklin County District Attorney Derek Champagne.

With a bunch like that in the wings, it's no wonder Boehner was weeping-- especially with the best of the lot, Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava thinking about running as a Democrat! Someone should get him and Glenn Beck together.